2 Windows Commands for Setting up File Association
Recently I learnt the following 2 commands which can be used for querying and setting file association in Win32 platform. Quite useful when we are trying to something through batch script. We can call the commands instead of doing the registry dirty work.
ASSOC
Displays or modifies file extension associations
ASSOC [.ext[=[fileType]]]
.ext Specifies the file extension to associate the file type with
fileType Specifies the file type to associate with the file extension
Type ASSOC without parameters to display the current file associations.
If ASSOC is invoked with just a file extension, it displays the current
file association for that file extension. Specify nothing for the file
type and the command will delete the association for the file extension.
FILETYPE
Displays or modifies file types used in file extension associations
FTYPE [fileType[=[openCommandString]]]
fileType Specifies the file type to examine or change
openCommandString Specifies the open command to use when launching files
of this type.
Type FTYPE without parameters to display the current file types that
have open command strings defined. FTYPE is invoked with just a file
type, it displays the current open command string for that file type.
Specify nothing for the open command string and the FTYPE command will
delete the open command string for the file type. Within an open
command string %0 or %1 are substituted with the file name being
launched through the assocation. %* gets all the parameters and %2
gets the 1st parameter, %3 the second, etc. %~n gets all the remaining
parameters starting with the nth parameter, where n may be between 2 and 9,
inclusive. For example:
ASSOC .pl=PerlScript
FTYPE PerlScript=perl.exe %1 %*
would allow you to invoke a Perl script as follows:
script.pl 1 2 3
If you want to eliminate the need to type the extensions, then do the
following:
set PATHEXT=.pl;%PATHEXT%
and the script could be invoked as follows:
script 1 2 3
