Running Windows shell commands in Julia

Question

Presumably in Julia, I can run shell commands by first pressing ; . But I was not lucky on my Windows 7 machine. Here is an example when I first run dir in the shell and then try to do the same in Julia:

 C:\Users\Public>dir Volume in drive C is OS Volume Serial Number is A4A2-4168 Directory of C:\Users\Public 01/30/2016 03:31 AM <DIR> . 01/30/2016 03:31 AM <DIR> .. 07/13/2009 09:08 PM <DIR> Documents 07/13/2009 08:54 PM <DIR> Downloads 01/02/2017 10:56 AM <DIR> Music 01/16/2016 02:53 PM 262,144 NTUSER.DAT 07/13/2009 08:54 PM <DIR> Pictures 11/20/2010 11:16 PM <DIR> Recorded TV 01/05/2016 06:06 AM <DIR> Roaming 07/13/2009 08:54 PM <DIR> Videos 1 File(s) 262,144 bytes 9 Dir(s) 850,167,861,248 bytes free C:\Users\Public>julia _ _ _ _(_)_ | A fresh approach to technical computing (_) | (_) (_) | Documentation: http://docs.julialang.org _ _ _| |_ __ _ | Type "?help" for help. | | | | | | |/ _` | | | | |_| | | | (_| | | Version 0.5.0 (2016-09-19 18:14 UTC) _/ |\__'_|_|_|\__'_| | Official http://julialang.org/ release |__/ | x86_64-w64-mingw32 shell> dir ERROR: could not spawn `dir`: no such file or directory (ENOENT) in _jl_spawn(::String, ::Array{String,1}, ::Ptr{Void}, ::Base.Process, ::RawFD, ::RawFD, ::RawFD) at .\process.jl:3 21 in #414 at .\process.jl:478 [inlined] in setup_stdio(::Base.##414#415{Cmd,Ptr{Void},Base.Process}, ::Tuple{RawFD,RawFD,RawFD}) at .\process.jl:466 in #spawn#413(::Nullable{Base.ProcessChain}, ::Function, ::Cmd, ::Tuple{RawFD,RawFD,RawFD}, ::Bool, ::Bool) at .\pr ocess.jl:477 in run(::Cmd) at .\process.jl:591 in repl_cmd(::Cmd, ::Base.Terminals.TTYTerminal) at .\client.jl:91 julia> 

I tried other commands, and cd works, but cls does not. What is wrong here?

Answer 1

The problem is that many of the “commands” in Windows are built-in, not programs. If someone wanted to implement special processing of all built-in cmd built-in Windows, PR would be welcome.

Answer 2

It works:

 shell>cmd /c dir