How to launch Windows' RegEdit with certain path?

Question

How do I launch Windows\' RegEdit with certain path located, like \"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\VisualStudio\\8.0\", so I don\'t have to do the clic

Answer 1

Building on lionkingrafiki's answer, here's a more robust solution that will accept a reg key path as an argument and will automatically translate HKLM to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE or similar as needed. If no argument, the script checks the clipboard using the htmlfile COM object invoked by a JScript hybrid chimera. The copied data will be split and tokenized, so it doesn't matter if it's not trimmed or even among an entire paragraph of copied dirt. And finally, the key's existence is verified before LastKey is modified. Key paths containing spaces must be within double quotes.

@if (@CodeSection == @Batch) @then
:: regjump.bat
@echo off & setlocal & goto main

:usage
echo Usage:
echo   * %~nx0 regkey
echo   * %~nx0 with no args will search the clipboard for a reg key
goto :EOF

:main
rem // ensure variables are unset
for %%I in (hive query regpath) do set "%%I="

rem // if argument, try navigating to argument.  Else find key in clipboard.
if not "%~1"=="" (set "query=%~1") else (
    for /f "delims=" %%I in ('cscript /nologo /e:JScript "%~f0"') do (
        set "query=%%~I"
    )
)

if not defined query (
    echo No registry key was found in the clipboard.
    goto usage
)

rem // convert HKLM to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, etc. while checking key exists
for /f "delims=\" %%I in ('reg query "%query%" 2^>NUL') do (
    set "hive=%%~I" & goto next
)

:next
if not defined hive (
    echo %query% not found in the registry
    goto usage
)

rem // normalize query, expanding HKLM, HKCU, etc.
for /f "tokens=1* delims=\" %%I in ("%query%") do set "regpath=%hive%\%%~J"
if "%regpath:~-1%"=="\" set "regpath=%regpath:~0,-1%"

rem // https://stackoverflow.com/a/22697203/1683264
>NUL 2>NUL (
    REG ADD "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Applets\Regedit"^
        /v "LastKey" /d "%regpath%" /f
)

echo %regpath%

start "" regedit
goto :EOF

@end // begin JScript hybrid chimera
// https://stackoverflow.com/a/15747067/1683264
var clip = WSH.CreateObject('htmlfile').parentWindow.clipboardData.getData('text');

clip.replace(/"[^"]+"|\S+/g, function($0) {
    if (/^\"?(HK[CLU]|HKEY_)/i.test($0)) {
        WSH.Echo($0);
        WSH.Quit(0);
    }
});