The Command Window, like the Immediate Window, can be one of those tools that a developer can find to be an invaluable aid and time saver. As the name implies, the Command Window is essentially a shell into Visual Studio and provides a mechanism other than point-and-click to activate and use Visual Studio’s features.

To start things off, the Command Window (if not already present) can be brought up by using the “Control-Alt-A” keystroke in Visual Studio 2005 and “Control-W A” in Visual Studio 2008.

Though it is available at all times to the developer, lets start off in Debug mode (where I use it the most). For example, you can mimic the Immediate Window by using the Debug.Print command (shown here using the eval and ? shortcuts):

But statement evaluation is just scratching the surface. For example:

Here we can see all the active threads going using Debug.ListThreads.

And of course, IntelliSense is supported:

Outside of Debug mode, almost all of the actions that you would normally perform through the UI via the mouse or keyboard shortcuts, are available via the Command Window. For example, opening a file:

Personally I hate taking my hand off the keyboard. With this, you can issue Control-Alt-A to open (or request focus) the Command Window up, type in your commands, and then hit Escape focus is back (most of the time :)) in your editor.

Some useful shortcuts/utilities built into the window:

• ?? (Debug.QuickWatch) — for example ?? x will setup a QuickWatch on x
• ? (Debug.Print) — as shown above, (evaluate and) Print an expression
• ~ (Debug.ListThreads)
• t (Debug.StepInto)
• alias — define your own alias
• log — log Command Window output to a file. For example, log /on C:\Debug.txt turns on logging and log /off turns logging off.

Plus a lot more. I don’t think this post did the power of this feature justice, but the following links can give you a lot more information:

• MSDN: Command Window
• MSDN: Predefined Visual Studio Command Aliases
• Visual Studio Hacks: Master the Command Window

Do you have any good tips or tricks using the Command Window? If so, leave an comment and I will update this post.