Just about everyone who maintains a system, whether a server or simply their own desktop, has a host of directories in various places that get used a lot.
For instance, on my own system, I have a bunch of directories in the root of the D: drive that get accessed a great deal. But depending on what's going on at a given time, the real object(s) of attention may be folders several layers deep in the hierarchy.
One way to deal with this situation is to create shortcuts to the often used folders. But shortcuts are not always the most elegant solution—especially if you need to address the target items programmatically.
Another way to do it is to assign a drive letter to the path using the SUBST command. But managing such substitutions isn't always very elegant either. Worse, substitutions using SUBST aren't preserved automatically between user sessions unless you implement them in a script.
I recently came across a utility that addresses these issues in a straightforward, frie
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ndly way. Visual Subst is essentially a GUI frontend for the SUBST command. It uses the exact same APIs as SUBST, so it functions more or less the same way. Nor does Visual Subst need installing—it runs wherever it happens to be residing. And it's a mere 55K.
Two things make Visual Subst particularly attractive:
However, the program has four limitations.
About the author: Serdar Yegulalp is editor of the Windows Insight, (formerly the Windows Power Users Newsletter), a blog site devoted to hints, tips, tricks and news for users and administrators of Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Vista. He has more than 12 years of Windows experience under his belt, and contributes regularly to SearchWinComputing.com and SearchSQLServer.com.
More information on this topic:
- Tip: Utility audits user access to files and directories
- Topics: Desktop management tools
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