# Change to the [cmd] tag on these forums



## DutchDaemon (Apr 20, 2013)

As regular posters may know, the [cmd] tag is quite tricky to use. Until now, when using the 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





 button on a selected block of text, you were prompted for a 'parameter', which was either % or $ for a user command, # for a root command, or a space or "" if the distinction did not matter. 

However, simply pressing [enter] in that box resulted in something that literally looked like "[cmd]ls -al[/cmd]", which means it had to be edited by hand into something like [cmd=""]ls -al[/cmd], to make it look like the desired [cmd=]ls -al[/cmd].

To mitigate this issue, the [cmd] tag can now be used like this: [cmd]ls -al[/cmd] which will simply show `ls -al`. Moreover, the 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 button in the edit box will now also work with the 'straight' [cmd] tag, so it will no longer prompt for a parameter. 

If you _really_ need to emphasize that a command needs to be run as a certain user, just make the user prompt (e.g. $ or % or #) part of the command itself. For example, [cmd]# ls -al[/cmd], which will look like `# ls -al`.

To maintain backward compatibility, the old-style [cmd] tags, which contained the user prompts within the tag (e.g. [cmd=$]) will continue to work.

The current options, in short:

[cmd]ls -al[/cmd] gives: `ls -al`
[cmd]$ ls -al[/cmd] gives: `$ ls -al`
[cmd]% ls -al[/cmd] gives: `% ls -al`
[cmd]# ls -al[/cmd] gives: `# ls -al`
[cmd=]ls -al[/cmd] gives: [cmd=]ls -al[/cmd]
[cmd=""]ls -al[/cmd] gives: [cmd=""]ls -al[/cmd]
[cmd=$]ls -al[/cmd] gives: `$ ls -al`
[cmd=%]ls -al[/cmd] gives: `% ls -al`
[cmd=#]ls -al[/cmd] gives: `# ls -al`

For all intents and purposes, simply selecting a block of text and clicking the 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 button will give the desired outcome in almost every case. I hope this change adds to the usability of these forums.


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