Talk:List of DOS commands/Archive 1

Help
help

What do you want help with ? Theresa knott 11:50, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * I think s/he's asking about the "HELP" command

Undelete
Does anyone remember the undelete command besides me? --Ardonik 00:18, Jul 14, 2004 (UTC)
 * Remember? It saved my ass a couple times! ;-) sam 05:20, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

I don't know exactly which versions of DOS /autotest works under, but it is real and I have used it before. WhisperToMe 05:07, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Added, my description is based on MS-DOS 5.0. [EM]

EXIT
Isn't EXIT an DOS command? Yes. It EXITS the prompt when DOS is run in Windows. ? in pure DOS


 * Done. Egumtow 21:58, 22 June 2006 (UTC)


 * In pure DOS it exits a secondary shell, this is noticable in programs that 'shell to dos'.--Wendy.krieger (talk) 07:27, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

COPY DEVICE
Why is "copy device" listed as separate command? In that sense, we should probably list COMx and AUX versions as well. 10:23, 23 Aug 2005 (UTC)


 * Believe it or not, early versions of DOS did not come with a useful editor, and 'copy con file' was a way of making a file. DOS 5 was the first MS/PC dos to feature a half-decent editor.  (it is slightly better than the one in Windows, a wrapper around the EDIT control! --Wendy.krieger (talk) 07:24, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree, COPY DEVICE is not a separate command (even if this was the only way to create a file). COPY is the command, DEVICE is an optional parameter for the command. I suggest this information be incorporated under the COPY section instead (without having a separate section for this optional usage). Andreas Toth (talk) 00:29, 15 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I have merged  and  . Alksentrs (talk) 13:53, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

IPCONFIG
What about "ipconfig"? --69.156.126.101 00:25, 1 February 2006 (UTC)


 * "ipconfig" never was a DOS command. "ipconfig" is a Microsoft Windows Console program. I think it should not be included in this list. peaNee 06:35, 1 February 2006 (UTC)


 * ipconfig, ping, etc are parts of the command line set for TCP/IP. It turns up in Windows NT and OS/2 when TCP/IP is installed, even under DOS.  I don't think it is useful to include it with DOS, since most of DOS is pre-network stuff.  On the other hand, i think it's useful to link this to a TCP/IP Command Line interface.  Wendy.krieger 07:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

deltree refers to rm?
The sentence after the deltree [/y] directory example says:


 * deltree's functions are also performed by rm when the option -r is used (or -rf for the /y switch).

...but there is no rm command listed. Do they mean rd/rmdir? --danwPlanet 17:39, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

No, rm is probably Unix. rd /s is the same as deltree.

Want discuss how to a some more content
I have a website that I want to merge into the Wikipedia. I have approx. 600 web pages, 26K local links within those pages, 5Mb of content.

I admit I really don't know where to start, and I don't want to break anything by trying to add things incorrectly.

Anyone want to suggest how to accomplish this? Has anyone done this recently?

Rick lively 16:28, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia content must not be primary source material, Wikipedia content must be verifiable, and Wikipedia content must be GFDL licenced. Also note that Wikipedia is not a tutorial or a user guide.  That sort of thing would belong in the Guide to Windows commands.  What sort of content is it, and why have you chosen this talk page to discuss it? Uncle G 18:12, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

DOS commands for WIN98..
How come there is no TREE command in 98se? What would the equivalent be?
 * It is true that Windows 98 don't include the Tree command. However if you can obtain a copy of the 'tree.com' file from a previous version of MS-DOS you can use it by adding it to the SETVER table using the 'Setver' command.
 * Windows XP comes with tree, I dont know why tree wouldnt come with 98. Doodle77 01:18, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

recover
I used to have a disk with a bad sector, so for fun I put it in an older computer (older at the time) that had DOS 5, I think, and tried the "recover" function, and it rendered the disk's other data unusable. Did anyone ever have any good results when using "recover"? 69.120.224.167 08:40, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

EDIT
Does EDIT count as a DOS command. If you type it into DOS the MS-DOS text EDITOR comes up. Does ping count as well? (RCX 03:58, 11 February 2006 (UTC))
 * Ping and ipconfig are not DOS commands because DOS doesnt come with them, Windows does. EDIT is also a DOS command, it replaced EDLIN, it is in my DOS manual. Doodle77 01:15, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Windows NT and OS/2 are both based on DOS 5. These come with a 16-bit EDLIN, even though they come with the DOS 5 Editor. Windows 2k and later comes with the MS-DOS 7 Editor, though. Edit does not replace edlin, in that edlin is still there, but is the preferred interactive editor for DOS (over edlin). 121.208.172.172 07:45, 27 August 2007 (UTC) - My comment Wendy.krieger 07:46, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Format
It says that the command "format" is seen as joke in the unix community, and then says that unix has an equivalent command, "mkfs". What's the difference? smurray  inch   e  ster  ( User ), ( Talk ) 18:37, 7 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that the joke refers to the /autotest parameter mentioned above the format example. But even though, in Unix systems you'll have to be logged in as a superuser to have access to the mkfs command. peaNee 13:54, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Is this page exclusively for DOS commands?
I think that we should not include commands of the Windows CMD.EXE Command Interpreter (like ping or ipconfig) in this article. In fact I would suggest a new List of Windows Commands article. What do you think? pinikas 12:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * DOS gives rise to OS/2 and Windows in the same way that Unix gives rise to Linux etc. So it is legitimate to talk about 'core' dos commands.  But all after DOS 5 have lots of bundled software which makes the native DOS less clear.


 * The MS-DOS 6 OEM disks are labled as "MS-DOS 6 and Additional Tools": two products. IBM bought only DOS 6, and supplied its own "additional tools".  Note these additional tools are not what's on the supplemental disks: these are largely depreciated DOS commands.


 * Some additional tools are meant to replace DOS commands. One notes that scandisk replaces chkdsk, and that dosshell and tree are meant to be done in Windows.  Windows NT, based on dos 5, does not have this feature.


 * DOS is largely pre-network: it supports a networking API, but has no preferred network interface. Commands that are built to run with OS/2 server (eg net), or with TCP-IP (ping, ipconfig) are not parts of DOS.


 * Some commands have appeared in later versions of DOS, for which have been replicated as parts of DOS-like operating systems. Examples include 'choice'.


 * Of scripting languages, i would include just three: basica = gwbasic, qbasic and rexx. The last of these appeared in OS/2 1.2, and migrated to DOS as part of IBM's SAA design.  VBA etc are very similar to qbasic, in that one can run many vba scripts directly in qbasic.  This is similar to the inclusion of many scripting languages (perl &c) in the Unix environment. Wendy.krieger 08:16, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

xcopy
I made a couple changes, because it is stated that Unix's cp is superior to xcopy, but in reality they have different functionality. See http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread52041.html for a good case where a simple xcopy command would require either the use of scripting, or tar in *nix. The case presented in this forum is not a complex or convoluted example, but a common use of xcopy. Luiscolorado 15:45, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Somebody removed most of the description for xcopy. I admit the article was too long and descriptive, but too much was removed. The changes assume knowledge of Unix, and the "cp" command description in the Unix article does not describe the parameter "-a". I'm restoring the xcopy section, but removing the parameters, and making it understandable regardless of the background of the reader. Luiscolorado (talk) 14:17, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Most commands have their own article (e.g. XCOPY). Please feel free to expand and improve those instead. This list of commands should be made much shorter, similar to List of Unix utilities. Ghettoblaster (talk) 22:12, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

regscan
Should regscan (the precursor to system restore) be included? --NEMT 06:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Are you talking about scanregw included with WinME? Very very useful command


 * No, though that's likely based on regscan (and both evolved into System Restore). Regscan was available in earlier versions of Windows. --NEMT 17:55, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Append
Append is missing. Damn useful tool back in the day :)


 * OS/2's DOS session still uses it! :s --Wendy.krieger (talk) 07:19, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Type and ^Z (note to self and others)
^Z is treated by type as an EOF character. Whether this makes it more or less equivalent to cat I don't know. Shinobu 19:03, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

I think it's more accurate to say that ^Z is treated as EOF by the CON device. Madlobster (talk) 22:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

^Z is treated as EOF by a number of programs, eg edlin, pcdos E editor etc. It was used a fair bit in coding languages (such as Quercus REXX), for removing the compiled object code after the file was edited. What IBM calls 'well behaved editors' would remove everything after the ^Z. --Wendy.krieger (talk) 07:17, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Windows XP and Vista equivelants
should these not be added?--Ted-m (talk) 02:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

REM
Two things about the "REM" section:

1) Is the '::.' intentional, if so, I suggest making it a bit clearer (perhaps by the use of a code-snippet).

2) The mention of label may need clarification as this is different to the label that the article refers to in all other places (the article's main meaning of label is that of a volume while, in this section, label is that of a location within a script.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Andreas Toth (talk • contribs) 00:17, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've got something to add. Who put in that little bit about the zero-length file usage??? Simply doesn't work. Duh, the idea is for the interpreter to ignore the line...redirects, pipes, whatever follows the 'rem' is IGNORED. So yeah, it don't work.

...Then someone adds the TYPE zero-length file usage for XP and its cousins. OK, what is this doing under rem?? Oh, and yeah...it causes an 'invalid syntax' error to be printed to standard out. Who gets away with adding these things? It should be removed, an entry for PROMPT should be created, and the tip for zero-length files should belong to prompt, as prompt without parameters produces no output (which can be readily redirected to a file, making it zero-length).

I'd love to help, but my wiki-editing skills are limited to fixing typos and such. I've not a clue how to create all the necessary linking for all those indexes and footer boxes and what have you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.197.229.185 (talk) 21:35, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

find/tree
The find and tree sections mention that the UNIX version of find performs like the DOS version of tree. I might be wrong, but this doesn't seem to be true at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.228.63.28 (talk) 06:30, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Moaning in here!
Wow, there are alot of people moaning about how many diferent commands are missing, WHY DON'T YOU ADD THEM YOURSELF THEN?!???!???!!!

I think its a Liberty people harrassing the creator of this article when all it takes is to add them your bloody selves.

Brighten up guys...Geeze. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arsenalboi22 (talk • contribs) 12:47, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

/? does not work for some commands
The /? parameter does not display a help page for all commands. For example, in earlier versions of Windows and Dos the commands ping /? and ftp /? will not work because these commands will interpret /? as an IP address. Furthermore, some commands only use the dash (-) instead of the slash to specify parameters, so will these commands take the /? parameter? 99.159.102.166 (talk) 17:14, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

exe2bin
The statement that exe2bin converts .exe files to binary files with .bin extensions is wrong. Exe2bin converts .exe files to binary files with .com extensions. 99.159.102.166 (talk) 17:16, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your suggestion. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills.  New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). Ghettoblaster (talk) 17:41, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

InterSvr / InterLnk
I would like to debate that this is a MS DOS 6.0 and higher file. I have a lexicomp MS Dos laptop running under ver as MS DOS 5.00 and yet it has contained in the EEPROM InterSvr.exe and InterLnk.exe

Arcticfoxslash (talk) 10:16, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The article currently says "First appeared in PC-DOS 5.02" and "MS-DOS 6 and above". I guess one of these statements has to be wrong. However, we should be able to find some references to this. Ghettoblaster (talk) 22:16, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * See, eg http://e-articles.info/e/a/title/DOS-Versions/ for Interlnk/Intersvr in PC-DOS 5.02. It appeared in every version of DOS 6.x (PC+MS)  --Wendy.krieger (talk) 08:38, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Internal vs. External
The list should probably be separated; meaning, the internal commands listed separately from the external commands. While I have neither the time or inclination to completely research that topic myself, I'm willing to compromise. Point me to a good one or two links that are wiki-acceptable, and I'll pick at over these last couple weeks of winter. Ched (talk) 02:01, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * +1 Lacrymocéphale 13:21, 15 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I disagree. From the user perspective internal and external commands work the same at the command-line. I think is is much better to have this list arranged alphabetically. If you want to look up a command, the first thing in your mind is probably the name and not whether it is internal or external. The way each command has been implemented should be included in the respective article of the command. We can also add this info as a table column, once this list article has become more like the List of Unix commands (see my comment in the next section). Ghettoblaster (talk) 22:46, 15 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Internal commands are implemented in the command processor. TIME and DATE were external in DOS 1, while DRDOS implemented SUBST, MORE internally.  4DOS (a command.com replacement) implements enhanced versions of tree, attrib, list, &c internally.--Wendy.krieger (talk) 07:05, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

nul/touch
With respect to the unix touch command, try nul >> filename 141.157.17.181 (talk) 02:01, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

At this point...
... I found a new command known as "at this point". It displays a list of... I don't really know. May you kindly help me and tell Wikipedia what it is? --Alexgan (talk) 14:30, 3 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Huh? Ghettoblaster (talk) 18:46, 3 April 2009 (UTC)