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Updated on Dec 8  2023


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MSDos Quick Guide

Deborah R. Fowler



MS-DOS Quick Guide

Posted on Aug 21  2018
Updated on April 16  2020

On many Linux and on OSX the default shell terminal language used is 'bash" (Bourne Again Shell - pun based on one of the early unix developers - Stephen Bourne).

The underlying OS on Windows evolved from MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) and in a terminal window you can still run DOS commands. Many linux commands do not work but you can find equivalents:

Comparison of DOS versus linux commands

There also exists PowerShell which does not use DOS, and has a limited number of commands. It is designed for command-line system administration tasks. For example, ls and dir both work in the powershell but in a Command Prompt window only dir works to list files.

To access:

Try typing

echo hello

It prints the word hello

cd Desktop
echo hello >> file.txt | type file.txt

In the dos shell it creates the file and prints the words on your window. In the powershell it does not print the words but does create the file. See images below:
MISSING IMAAGEMISSING IMAAGE


echo hello >> file1.txt | cat file1.txt

In the dos shell it says 'cat' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
MISSING FILE

In PowerShell it still does not display the contents. But typing either on a separate line, cat file1.txt or type file1.txt or Get-Content -Path .\file1.txt the contents of the file. Piping in PowerShell is a bit different in that it does not pipe text but will pipe objects. Really these are separate commands - so you can run them with a semi-colon separating them if desired.

MISSING IMAGE

echo hello  > file1.txt ; type file1.txt

The above command will work in powershell, but not in the Command Line Window


Looking at the >> symbol, this directs the content into a file. It will append if you use >> and will replace if you use >

Now what if you type

echo miss piggy > file1.txt

In cmd you will get miss piggy as a single line, in powershell, separate lines. Really we should use quotes to get a the correct string literal.

MISSING IMAGEMISSING IMAGE

Why show you this? To see that really, underneath the hood, windows can look a great deal like linux. Nautilus is an application used on our linux system to make linux look more like windows. It is the default file manager for Gnome and draws the desktop and desktop icons (ie folders). Again a pun here - Nautilus is a type of shell.

Command line can be useful in both systems. Whether you use a scripting language like bash, python, dos, or powershell script.

My personal preference is to use python for scripting on windows. See examples here.