Does anybody else remember NCD.exe? This is a way old school command-line utility written in the mid-eighties. It built a databaose of the directories on your hard drive, then when you typed ncd <foo> it would try to get a partial match against the database. Where there were multiple matches, a little ANSI graphics box popped up and allowed you to use the cursor to select the right folder. Once the folder is selected, your working directory is changed. Very simple and to the point.

I don’t know why I got to thinking about it. I used to collect utilities like this back in the DOS days but as I got into Windows that became less and less important. But now I’m always in a powershell console and I find myself missing this sort of tool. I found a very informative (if confused and rambling) webpage on the topic which brought back some old memories. There’s a bunch of clones of NCD, I found one called WCD released as recently as 2006 which is available for several different shells.

Seems this sort of thing would be well within the realm of a PowerShell utility. A bit beyond my own skills perhaps, or at least my interest in learning how to write at the moment. But maybe someone else will be inspired.