Useful Custom Commands

To unpack to the current directory:

unzip "!"

To unpack to an alternate directory:

unzip -d "!?&Extract to directory:?.!" "!"

To create an archive:

zip -r "!?&Enter an Archive Name:?archive.zip!" !&

rar a -ep "!?&Enter an Archive Name:?archive.rar!" !&

Use following command to quickly delete large directory structures:

rm -f -r "!"

The same command can ask for confirmation before deleting:

test "!?Do you really want to delete ?no!" == "yes" && rm -rf !&

Use the following command to delete a large directory structure in a separate process:

cmd.exe /c start "" cmd /c ""C:\Program Files (x86)\WinSCP\WinSCP.com" /command "open !S" "cd !/" "rm !&" "exit" & "C:\Program Files (x86)\WinSCP\WinSCP.exe" "!S" /refresh "!/""

Replace C:\Program Files (x86) with C:\Program Files on 32-bit systems.

Check custom command options Local command, Apply to directories and Use remote files.

Use following command if current protocol does not allow changing ownership:

chown "!?New owner:?!" !&

To change group use chgrp instead of chown. Or use following command:

chown "!?New owner (and group: user:group):!" !&

or with two separate prompts:

chown -R "!?New owner:?!":"!?New group:?!" !&

Example shows how to launch simple PHP script that maps file path to URL.

echo '<?="https://www.example.com".str_replace("home/user/public_html", "~user", "'`pwd`'")."/!\n"?>' | php -q

Hints:

• Note that the above should be entered as one line!
• Do not forget to check custom command option Show results in terminal or Copy results to clipboard, otherwise you will not get the results. You may also want to use the command for directories, check Apply to directories too.
• For your particular use, just replace https://www.example.com with right URL prefix, home/user/public_html with right path prefix and ~user with right URL replacement (it can even be empty in some cases).
• If you do mapping like above, i.e. for server containing multiple user’s homepages, you can make it universal by replacing user with '`whoami`'.

Another example using shell commands only, in case PHP is not available:

echo 'https://www.example.com'`pwd`'/!' | sed s#home/user/public_html#~user#

cp /path/to/template.html "!?&New HTML file:?!"

cmd /C start "!/!" "%ProgramFiles%\PuTTY\plink.exe" -load "WinSCP temporary session" tail -f "!/!"  

Check custom command options Local command and Use remote files.

find . -name "!?Search for files:?!"

Check custom command option Show results in terminal.

grep -H -r "!?Search for text:?!" *  | cut -d: -f1

Check custom command option Show results in terminal.

mv ! $(echo "!" | sed "s/\..*$//").$(date '+%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M').$(echo ! | awk -F"." '{ print $NF }')

Use following remote custom command to transfer selected remote files to an another server:

scp -p -r !& !?Username:?!@!?Host:?!:!?Destination path:?!

You may want to hard-code the Username and Host, if you work with one destination server only. Or you can use a single prompt for both (possibly even for Destination Path) to keep the flexibility, yet to reduce number of prompts:

scp -p -r !& !?Username@Host:?!:!?Destination path:?!

Note that you need to ensure you can connect and authenticate to the destination server without any prompts:

• Connect at least once from an interactive terminal (such as PuTTY SSH client) to verify the destination server host key.
• Use for example Agent forwarding to forward your private key to the destination server for authentication.
• Another less-secure method of authentication is use of sshpass tool (see its man page).

WinSCP will display error message, when the custom command returns exit code different than 0 or 1; or prints a message on error output, but no normal output.

To suppress the error message:

• Redirect error output to /dev/null, to discard it:
  

  command_that_prints_non_interesting_progress_on_error_output > /dev/null

• Redirect error output to standard output, to see it in terminal, but avoid error message:
  

  command_that_prints_interesting_info_on_error_output 2>&1

• Use || true to discard exit code:
  

  command_that_returns_255_code || true

• Or combine these together:

  command_that_prints_interesting_info_on_error_output_and_returns_255_code 2>&1 || true