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Dos Commands Brush up

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Microsoft Disk Operating System known as MS-DOS is a Single User, Character Based Client User interface (CUI) Operating System. So, here we have a Quick Brush up guide for everyone so that we can let DOS do most of our general work.

It was mainly shipped with Most Computers in Early 90’s. As today’s Windows Operating Systems like 7/8/10 is GUI Based yet sometimes we use DOS for some of our work and some basic understanding of DOS fundamentals is always beneficial.

Note: This article only covers the basic fundamentals of Dos Commands and we’ll also show how to use DOS to tell its commands List if you get stuck anywhere.

Accessing MS-DOS

  • Hit Win + r & type cmd press Enter you will get the terminal.
  • Press Start button then Program then goto accessories and click Command prompt.

Now as you have DOS Terminal in front of you then here is some list of Dos Commands which should be known by every Computer user.

Dir Command :

This Command Displays all the files and folders present in current working Directory.

  • Dir/w

    • If number of files and folders are large then this command removes attributes like date and time for each file and folder and displays names horizontally taking minimum space.

  • Dir/on

    • This command Sorts and displays files alphabetically.

  • Dir/o-n

    • This command Sorts and displays files in reverse alphabetical order.

Format :

  • Format d:

    • Format disk drive labeled d: to erase its contents.

  • Format d: /q

    • Quickly Format disk drive labeled d: to erase its contents.

  • Format fs=fat32 quick

    • Format disk drive with specified file system ex: FAT32/ NTFS quickly.

Copy :

  • Copy source_path destination _path
    • Copy . d:

Make Directory

  • Md c:directory_name

Change Directory

  • cd
    • Goes to root level of drive.
  • cd ..
    • Goes to up one level of current working directory.

Delete Command

  • del file_name.text
    • deletes specified filename

File Types in DOS:

Dos has numerous file types called extensions some of which should be known which tells about the usage of associated files.

  • .bat

    • These types of file extensions are used widely are known as batch files. These files contain series of dos commands written in plain English to be executed automatically in a batch.

  • .bak

    • This extension is used for making copy of any existing file’s basically act as backups.

  • .bas

    • This is also called basic file or computer language program file.

  • .bin

    • Referred as binary file.