MS-DOS Super-Commands

There's more to DOS than COMMAND.COM to be sure. You may already be familiar with many of the external DOS commands which came with the operating system. However there are a whole host of other external commands developed by other parties, which can be used.

Time doesn't stand still Don't you just HATE it when you're trying to include a time and/or date in your batch file and the standard DOS TIME and DATE commands grind everything to a halt, while waiting for user input. I do. Mind you I hate a lot of things. That's why I use Clock. It's simple, it's wholesome, it's only 10KB with instructions. Download it now.

Music to my ears DOS can be musical too you know. Through the miracles of modern programming (well, 1980s anyway) you can enjoy the true high fidelity of your little PC speaker every time your batch file runs. Very handy for alerting users to various DOS events. Download Dos Sounds.

Convert Batch Files to Executables Great little utility for converting a batch file to a .com file. At the command prompt, simply type BAT2EXEC FILENAME.BAT. Download bat2exec now.

Wait for it If you need to make your batch file wait for a specified number of seconds, then wait is the command for you..

Skip Make your batch file jump any number of lines- get skip.

Write coloured text with write.exe Use like echo but put text in inverted commas. Number at end of line indicates colour. Sorry I lost the colour key so you'll have to experiment. Have fun..

Dos Here Not strictly for batch files, but a very useful tool for Windows. Fed up with typing those long path names in a command prompt? Dos Here allows you to open a command prompt window, logged onto any directory.

From Windows Explorer, simply right click on any directory and select Command Prompt Here. In the example to the right, a command box opens displaying the path,
F:\Web\andrewmallett.net\tafe\dos>.

Firstly download doshere.inf - then right click on it and select Install.

Find your own

There many websites with interesting DOS files for downloading. Simply typing "Dos Utilities" into a Google search brought me thousands of hits. Here are a few examples: