HELP

Provides Help for Windows commands.

HELP [command]

Where:

  • command - Displays information (usage, syntax, etc.) for the specified command.

Without parameters, displays a list of Windows-compatible commands. Commands that are not displayed (like CHOICE) I call hidden commandshidden commands. For these commands, help is only displayed by specifying /? as an option, which can also be used for non-hidden commands. Example:

  • HELP DEL - OK ✔
  • DEL /? - OK ✔
  • HELP CHOICE - Bad ✘
  • CHOICE /? - OK ✔

However, a hidden command that has more ways to display help is NET:

NET /?
NET HELP

Both forms are fine. Also, this command breaks down into subcommands, so the syntax for NET commands becomes:

NET [subcommand] /?
NET HELP [subcommand]

Where:

  • subcommand - Displays information, usage, and syntax for the specified NET subcommand.

Specifying HELP instead of /? in the NET command provides more information.

Two non-hidden commands that are exceptions are DISKPARTDISKPART and FSUTILFSUTIL. To view the DISKPART help, you can simply start the DISKPART interpreter and execute the HELP command inside it. For FSUTIL instead, you can simply type and run FSUTIL from CMD.EXE without any parameters.

Examples:

1. Displays information about the ECHO command (which is not a hidden command, see ECHOECHO):

help echo

or:

echo /?

 

2. Display information about the CHOICE command (hidden command, see Batch filesBatch files):

choice /?

 

3. Displays information about the NET SEND subcommand (NET subcommand):

net send /?

or:

net help send

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