Erwin Waterlander

WCD - Wherever Change Directory

chdir for DOS and Unix, w/C src

Wcd is a command-line program to change directory fast. It saves time typing at the keyboard. One needs to type only a part of a directory name and wcd will jump to it. Wcd has a fast selection method in case of multiple matches and allows aliasing and banning of directories. Wcd also includes a full screen interactive directory tree browser with speed search.

Wcd was modeled after Norton Change Directory (NCD). NCD appeared first in The Norton Utilities, Release 4, for DOS in 1987, published by Peter Norton. NCD was written by Brad Kingsbury.

wcd Desk

wcd *top

Wcd is free to use and you can get the source code too.

Some features of wcd:

Full screen interactive directory browser with speed search and zoom in/out.

Present the user a list in case of multiple matches.

Wildcards *, ? and [SET] supported.

Directory stack, push pop.

Subdir definition possible. E.g. wcd subdira/subdirb

Long directory names support in Win95/98/NT DOS-box

Windows LAN UNC paths supported.

Change drive and directory at once.

Alias directories.

Ban directories.

Exclude directories.

Alternate stack per shell or terminal.

Multi user: Jump to folders of your colleagues.

Multi platform:

• DOS 16 bit, DOS 32 bit, DOS bash
• Windows Command prompt, Windows PowerShell, Windows zsh, MSYS, Cygwin
• Unix/Linux: all Bourne and C type shells.
• OS/2 Warp

Native language support: Dutch, English, Finnish, Spanish

Unicode support, including double width and combining characters.

• UTF-8 Unicode support for Unix/Linux and Cygwin-1.7.
• UTF-16 Unicode support for Windows XP/Vista PowerShell.

SCREENSHOTS.

Manual pages in HTML format.
Manual pages in text format.
Manual pages in PostScript format.
Manual pages in PDF format.

How to open wcd best match directory in Windows Explorer.

Download WCD:

For previous releases see: Old versions of wcd

Ready-to-Run binaries

TIP: DOS/Windows 9x/NT/2000 with PDCurses interface: Set environment variable PDC_RESTORE_SCREEN so that the screen will be restored after wcd exits. Add this to your autoexec.bat file: set PDC_RESTORE_SCREEN=1

• Linux
  • i386
    • wcd-5.1.1-linux-fc10.tar.gz dynamically linked to ncurses 5.6. Built on Fedora Core 10.
    • wcd-5.1.1-linux-fc10-ucs.tar.gz with Unicode support, dynamically linked to ncurses 5.6. Built on Fedora Core 10.
    • wcd-5.1.1-1.i386.rpm RedHat (Applications/File), dynamically linked to ncurses 5.6. With Unicode support. Built on Fedora Core 10.
  • any
  • Wcd package for Debian at http://packages.debian.org/wcd
  • Wcd package for Ubuntu at http://packages.ubuntulinux.org/
• DOS / Windows 95/98/ME
  • 16 bit Real Mode (Without Native Language Support)
    • wcd511b.zip PDCurses 2.8
    • wcd511bc.zip Conio, no graphics.
    • wcd504bu.zip Conio, no graphics. Compressed with UPX Small executable (46 kB).
  • 32 bit Protected Mode
    A fast 32 bit DOS version which supports long directory names in a Windows 95/98 DOS-box. Requires 80386 CPU or higher.
    • wcd-5.1.1-dos32.zip DOS32. PDCurses 3.3.
    • wcd-5.0.4-dos32-upx.zip DOS32. PDCurses 3.3. Compressed with UPX (574 kB)
    • wcd-5.0.4-dos32-nonls.zip DOS32. PDCurses 3.3. Without Native Language Support, compressed with UPX (83 kB)
    • wcd-5.0.4-dos32-nonls-con.zip DOS32. Conio. Without Native Language Support, compressed with UPX (64 kB)
  • BASH 32 bit
    This version is to be used in the DJGPP DOS port of the Unix Bourne Again Shell (bash). Requires 80386 CPU or higher.
    • wcd-5.1.1-dos32bsh.zip DOS32 BASH. PDCurses 3.3
• Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista With long directory name and Windows LAN UNC paths support. If special characters (e.g. accented characters) are not shown properly, see the manual section WINDOWS CODE PAGES.
  • Win32 console (command prompt)
    • wcd-5.1.1-win32.zip PDCurses 3.4
  • Windows PowerShell. See also Windows PowerShell (WikiPedia). UNC paths are supported directly, no mapping to drive letters needed. Note: Only the file system provider is supported, no other providers.
    • wcd-5.1.1-win32psh.zip PDCurses 3.4
    • wcd-5.1.1-win32psh-ucs.zip PDCurses 3.4. With Unicode support. You need to rescan all your drives. You need to set the font to True Type Lucida Console. See also the manual section LOCALIZATION / UNICODE.
  • Win32 Z Shell. Requires windows native Z Shell for Windows. Works also on Windows 9x. UNC paths are supported directly, no mapping to drive letters needed.
    • wcd-5.1.1-win32zsh.zip PDCurses 3.4
  • MSYS. Use Win32 Z Shell version. You have to start MSYS like this: msys.bat --norxvt , because the default rxvt terminal doesn't accept standard input from native win32 programs (see also here). If your msys.bat doesn't support --norxvt, get the latest version here.
  • CygWin (i586). Behaves as the Unix versions. Works also on Windows 9x. UNC paths are supported directly, no mapping to drive letters needed.
    • Cygwin Ports.
    • wcd-5.1.1-cygwin1.5.tar.gz Cygwin 1.5, ncurses 5.7
    • wcd-5.1.1-cygwin1.7-ucs.tar.gz Cygwin 1.7 with Unicode support, ncurses 5.7 (Requires Cygwin 1.7. Set character encoding to UTF-8 with LANG or LC_CTYPE environment variable, e.g. export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8, and rescan your drives.)
• BSD
  • freeBSD 4.10 wcd-5.1.1-freebsd4.10.tar.gz (74 kB) linked to ncurses 5.1.
    (PREFIX=/home/w/waterlan, set WCDLOCALEDIR to appropriate value)
• HP-UX
  • HP-UX 11.00 (PA-RISC1.1) wcd-3.2.1-hpux11.00.tar.gz (152 kB) statically linked to ncurses 5.3. Fallback: xterm,dtterm,vt100,vt220
  • Binaries for other HP-UX versions can be found at The porting and archiving centre for HP-UX
• SunOS (SPARC)
  • wcd-3.2.1-SunOS5.6.tar.gz (118 kB) dynamically linked to curses. (Thanks to Etienne Joarlette)
  • wcd-3.2.1-SunOS5.6-ncurses.tar.gz (132 kB) statically linked to ncurses 5.5. (Thanks to Etienne Joarlette)
• AIX
  • Binaries for various AIX versions can be found at Public Domain Software Library for AIX
• Mac OS X/Darwin
  • Several binaries at The Huntsville Macintosh Users Group.
  • wcd-3.1.0-macosx10.2.tar.gz (84 kB) linked to ncurses. (Thanks to Zoltan Varady)
• QNX
  • QNX 4.25 (i386) wcd-3.2.1-qnx425.tar.gz (124 kB) linked to ncurses. (Thanks to Roland Messier)
• BeOS
  • http://www.bebits.com/app/3384
• OS/2 WARP
  • hobbes.nmsu.edu /pub/os2/dev/util
  • OS/2 Site - Util - Directory
  • wcd-5.1.1-os2.zip Ncurses. (Thanks to Elbert Pol)

Source Code

• wcd-5.1.1-src.tar.gz Sources, Unix text
• wcd511s.zip Sources, DOS text
• wcd510bs.zip All DOS and Windows executables with sources (DOS text).
• wcd-5.1.1-1.src.rpm Red Hat source rpm (built on Fedora Core 10)

Latest development version from Subversion repository:

Beta version 5.1.2 beta1 (Jan 19 2010)

• wcd-5.1.2-beta1-src.tar.gz source (unix text)
• wcd512-b1s.zip source (dos text)

How to build wcd on DOS or Windows.
How to install wcd on DOS or Windows.
How to build and install wcd on Unix/Linux.

WCD related links

• SourceForge: Wcd is hosted by SourceForge. The Wcd project page is at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wcd/.
• Fresmeat: The wcd Freshmeat project page is at http://freshmeat.net/projects/wcd
• VIM: wcd.vim : Wherever Change Directory in vim

Old versions of wcd

Other directory changers

Notification of new versions

Want to be notified whenever a new version of WCD arrives? Send an email to with subject wcd add. Write in the email for which operating system you use wcd. (Your e-mail address will only be used for notification of new versions of wcd. It will not be given to any third party.) You will not get a notification of all beta versions, only when there are important changes in a beta release. To remove your e-mail address from the list send an email with subject wcd remove.

You can also subscribe to the wcd project page at http://freshmeat.net/projects/wcd or http://sourceforge.net/projects/wcd/. Beta versions are never notified via Freshmeat or SourceForge.

dos2unix / unix2dos

Man 1.3

This is a simple `man' clone. It can be used to display Unix man pages, both formatted and unformatted. It can also be used to display pure-text docs, provided that the directory where these files are kept is mentioned in the MANPATH environment variable; this makes it especially suited to the PC environment where typically each program or package come with some kind of text-only documentation.

A 16 bit 'groff' is currently missing, so unformatted man pages cannot be viewed yet.

• man13b16.zip man 1.3 16 bit binary (29 kB)
• man13s.zip man 1.3 sources (24 kB)
• man12b.zip man 1.2 16 bit binary (27 kB)
• man12s.zip man 1.2 sources (18 kB)

Get the 'less' pager from the gnuish collection.
GNUish Project

DosDir 2.1a

• dosdir21.zip (zip 37 kB)
• dosdir21.tgz (tar gzip 30 kB)

Verjaardagkalender

Verjrdag is een eenvoudige verjaardagkalender voor DOS, Windows en Unix. Verjrdag waarschuwt vooraf en achteraf. Het aantal dagen vooraf en achteraf is in te stellen.

Verjrdag is a simple birthday calendar for DOS, Windows en Unix. Verjrdag warns before and after a birthday. The number of days before and after can be adjusted.

• vjd107.zip (zip 180 kB) Dos, Windows, Linux. w/src
• WHATSNEW

Another Signal Manager (DOS/Windows/Linux version)

A digital signal processing program for educational purposes.

After 10 years I finally took some effort to port ASM for DOS to Windows and Linux. It was a piece of cake. The Allegro graphical library I used for DOS, had become multi-platform in the meantime.

SCREENSHOTS.

Manual, updated Sep 8 2007:

• asm.pdf Manual in PDF format (200 kB)
• asm.ps Manual in PostScript format (185 kB)

ZSH for Windows

Amol Desphande made a native Windows port of zsh. Works also on Windows 9x. UNC paths are supported directly, no mapping to drive letters needed. Here you find the latest version made by Amol. He is not maintaining this any more. His last change was on Jan 27 2001. A recent port of zsh on Windows is available in the CygWin environment.

• Binary: zsh-3.0.5-nt-beta-0.75.zip (Jun 14 2000)
• Source code: zshsrc-beta-0.76.tar.gz (Jan 27 2001) Only the icon changed since version 0.75.

Interesting links:

free software programming

Gratis compilers (no payment)

Free Operating Systems

Freeware (archives, links collections etc.)

Games