Table of Contents
Disk Operating System (DOS) Commands
DOS commands are commands available in the disk operating system that are used to perform tasks with the operating system and other command line-based software. DOS commands are used by typing the command at the DOS prompt “C:\>”.
There are two types of MS-DOS commands: –
• Internal DOS Commands
• External DOS Commands
Internal (DOS) Commands
Internal DOS commands are commands that are already in the MS-DOS main file command.com because they are the most important and have to be given frequently. These commands are always available in the main memory of the computer and no other file is required to run them, hence they are called internal commands.
Following are the internal commands of MS-DOS:-
BREAK, COPY, ERASE, RD, SHIFT, EXIT, MD, REM, TIME, CD, DATE, FOR, MKDIR, REN, TYPE, CHCP, DEL, GOTO, PATH, RENAME, VER, CHDIR, DIR, IF, PAUSE, RMDIR, VERIFY, CLS, ECHO, PROMPT, SET, VOL.
External DOS Commands
External DOS commands are commands that are not available in the computer’s main memory but are stored on disk as separate program files. As soon as you give an external command, the command processor looks for its corresponding file on disk and loads it into memory if found. With this, the execution of that command begins. To run external DOS commands, it is necessary that their version should be the same as that of your MS-DOS, otherwise the message ‘Incorrect Version’ will appear and the command will be cancelled.
Following are the main external DOS commands of MS-DOS:-
APPEND, DOSKEY, HELP, MOVE, SORT, ATTRIB, DOSSHELL, KEYB, MSAV, SYS, CHKDSK, EXPAND, LABEL, NLSFUNC, TREE, DELTREE, FASTOPEN, MEM, MSBACKUP, UNDELETE, DISKCOMP, FORMAT, MEMMAKER, PRINT, XCOPY, DISKCOPY, GRAPHICS, MORE, RESTORE