I use the command line in Windows all the time, for a lot of different things. Back in 1998, I realised one of my really common operations was to copy a file to the clipboard (using Windows Explorer; either right-click-copy or select the file/folder and hit CTRL-C) and then paste it into a destination folder.
As I always had a command prompt open, I’d often do this by changing to the destination directory, typing ‘start .’ to invoke an Explorer Window in that directory, then hitting CTRL-V. I realised it’d be awesome if I could cut out that ‘start .’ step, and thought a command line tool to allow me to paste files directly would be really handy.
So, I wrote a Win32 command line tool that did exactly that. It was really hacky, but it worked – I’ve used it almost every day since to copy and move files around.
10 years later, I realise I never even put it up for people to download or even offered it to anyone. So, here it is – cpaste for Windows.