Vista - FEATURE REQUEST: better line editing

The line editor is where the user spends all his time interacting with the
shell. It should be as comfortable as possible.

For instance, the up and down arrow keys should move you between recent
/commands/ not recent /lines/.

That is, hitting the up arrow show move you to the full text of the last
command.

Eg,

C:\> dir |
>> ? {
>> $_.length -gt 1000
>> }

If I hit the up arrow, I don't want to see:

C:\> }

I want to see:

C:\> dir | ? { $_.length -gt 1000 }

So I can then hit Enter to re-execute the command. (This is especially
annoying when trying to redefine functions.)

And then there should be easier ways of moving the cursor around.

In fact, if you look closely you'll see that every single raw keyboard
command is a standard old-fashioned DOSKEY-style command. They didn't want
to get into low-level interactive interface issues in this version, but it's
extremely annoying. Another annoyance for me since I tend to copy-paste code
a lot is the fact that a pasted tab is the same as a tab at the keyboard -
it attempts autocompletion.

"Adam Milazzo [MSFT]" <adamm@san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:uOc2WDbvGHA.4460@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> The line editor is where the user spends all his time interacting with the
> shell. It should be as comfortable as possible.
>
> For instance, the up and down arrow keys should move you between recent
> /commands/ not recent /lines/.
>
> That is, hitting the up arrow show move you to the full text of the last
> command.
>
> Eg,
>
> C:\> dir |
>>> ? {
>>> $_.length -gt 1000
>>> }
>
> If I hit the up arrow, I don't want to see:
>
> C:\> }
>
> I want to see:
>
> C:\> dir | ? { $_.length -gt 1000 }
>
> So I can then hit Enter to re-execute the command. (This is especially
> annoying when trying to redefine functions.)
>
> And then there should be easier ways of moving the cursor around.
>

Alex K. Angelopoulos [MVP] wrote:
> In fact, if you look closely you'll see that every single raw keyboard
> command is a standard old-fashioned DOSKEY-style command. They didn't want
> to get into low-level interactive interface issues in this version, but it's
> extremely annoying. Another annoyance for me since I tend to copy-paste code
> a lot is the fact that a pasted tab is the same as a tab at the keyboard -
> it attempts autocompletion.

Huh, I'm surprised that pasting text with a tab character causes it to
attempt tab completion.

They could do /so much/ cool stuff if they moved away from a purely
console-based approach.

I'm thinking of something like the Python "IDE" that comes with
ActivePython. Essentially, a shell running in a text editor, with some
rudimentary intellisense. If you hit Enter at the end of a command, it
executes the command. Otherwise, you can edit the command in its
entirety very easily.

Plus, they could do things like have tab completion not clear the rest
of the line, implement incremental history search, like bash's Ctrl-R, etc.

But if they don't get around to it this release, I won't mind too much.

I just hope they don't have a 2-3 year release cycle. They should try to
keep a short cycle, 6 months max, until it stabilizes...