Need To List Folder Contents?

Sometimes, it’s much better to take the easy way out, and that’s what I usually try to do. Some call this laziness, I call it efficiency, but I have to admit that probably the truth is somewhere in between… and when it comes to the need to list folder contents, there’s only one path to follow: the easy one!

Sure, if you really want to make it like old school boys do, you could open a command prompt window and use the DIR command. It’s pretty flexible, and you can easily save the output to a text file using something like “DIR C:\Windows >listing.txt” and nothing more, but there are a bunch of attributes available to use with this command. To find out all there is to know about the DIR command and the attributes available, just type “DIR /?” or “help DIR” in a command prompt window and press Enter.

Good… Now let’s live that ugly command line aside and move to the little program I discovered earlier today, namely Dir Print, shall we?

I know this program is ridiculously simple, but maybe you just don’t need any flexibility for your folder listing tasks, and maybe you even hate the command line, so using this little piece of code could be the best solution for you. There’s nothing to install, nothing to setup, everything is located in the main window of the program, so even my grandma could use it without breaking a sweat!

Dir Print allows you to print or save the contents of a folder to a text file, and the only problem I noticed is that it doesn’t save any advanced data (creation date of a file/folder would have been nice), and it won’t go deeper into a folder than the first level, either… or maybe it was some hidden switch that I missed, but I don’t think so.

Anyway, if we draw the line, I am sure Dir Print can get a lot better, but even the way things are looking now, we have a useful tool for those who need to list folder contents just like that, without displaying the whole structure of subfolders and advanced file/folder data like attributes, creation date or size.

Oh, one more thing – this is not freeware, but donationware, so if you really think Dir Print is worth your attention, spare a few bucks and donate, will you?