ANSICON

Similar to the ansi.sys command in MS-DOS, ANSICON is a command-line application that provides extra ANSI escape sequences, which be used with console programs for Windows. It's wrapped in a lightweight package that doesn't need installation.

Since the application is portable, you can save it anywhere on the computer and just double-click the .exe file to run, as well as keep it stored on a USB flash drive to effortlessly launch ANSICON on any PC without setup. There are two executables that can be separately deployed on 32- and 64-bit Windows.

In the Command Prompt window, you can type "help" to view a list of all commands supported by this software utility. For example, it's possible to view or change file extension associations (ASSOC) or attributes (ATTRIB), create or remove extended Ctrl+C checking (BREAK), and call one batch program from another (CALL).

You can view and set the date (DATE), remove one or more files from the computer (DEL), display a list of all files of a folder and its subfolders (DIR), edit command lines, recall Windows commands and generate macros (DOSKEY), compare two files to view the differences (FC) as well as look up one or more files for specific text (FIND).

ANSICON also shows the CMD built-in options for formatting partitions (FORMAT), allowing Windows to show an extended character set in graphics mode (GRAFTABL), printing text documents (PRINT), renaming one or more files at a time (REN or RENAME), deleting entire directories of files (RMDIR), replacing files with others (REPLACE), terminating currently running processes (TASKKILL), viewing all running apps and services (TASKLIST), and more.

We haven't experienced any compatibility issues with Windows 10 in our tests. ANSICON worked smoothly and executed commands quickly while remaining light on system resources usage. Thanks to its wide range of commands, it can be handled by those who prefer performing file operations in the console environment.

Worth noting is that ANSICON is only capable of processing escape sequencues. The extra options are just integrated with CMD.