How To Find A List Of Simple DOS Commands
August 6, 2008
If you are looking for a list of simple DOS commands, there are many available, however they are usually very incomplete, listing only a few. There are a lot more DOS commands than many people realize or remember.
Microsoft Corp has MS-DOS as it’s trademark. Disk Operating System is what DOS stands for. The reason it was written (it is software) - was to control hardware. That hardware was the IBM PC. When it was introduced to the computing industry in 1981, Microsoft Windows was not even on the drawing board. The user interface for DOS is a plain simple command line. The last update for DOS which was ver 6.22 happened in 1994.
You will be presented with a DOS command prompt on the DOS command line eg C:\>. This indicated that DOS will search on drive C which is usually your hard disk for the command you are going to run. If your files you want to run are stored in a different location, then you will need to change to the drive where they reside eg typing D: will get you to a D:\> prompt, or E: will get you to a E:\> prompt.
There have been a number of DOS versions brought out over the years. The following are some of them:
1. PC DOS
2. MS-DOS version
3. DR-DOS
4. 4 DOS
DOS can be used quite happily with windows. In certain circumstances, if you are familiar enough with DOS, sometimes it can actually be faster to switch over to DOS and issue your command there, than to used the fancy graphical interface in windows. Given this, having a list of simple DOS commands handy can be an advantage.
DOS can be used particularly useful in today’s day and age when Windows crashes, and you need basic commands to talk to you computer without having to go through Windows.
You can actually achieve most basic things you want to achieve by typing DOS commands on the command line at the DOS prompt. This is where a list of simple DOS commands can be very handy.
Microsoft Windows XP actually comes with a DOS command shell. This shell contains 71 DOS commands. The most frequently used DOS commands are all about file management and directory management.
The best source for a list of simple DOS commands and their uses is your DOS user manual.
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