Help in DOS
Starting with switches
So how do you get help with those DOS commands? The usual way is to type the
command,
followed by a
space, a
forward slash and a
question mark. This will type the various parameters onto the screen:
MOVE /?
In the above example, the DOS command is
MOVE.EXE and the forward slash is known as a
switch or
parameter. The switch modifies the DOS command in some way (note a forward slash slopes to the right - you read from left to right - so it slopes
forwards). The
/? function is itself a switch and tells the command to type out the allowed parameters.
Switches are usually
unique to a particular DOS command. For instance, the
/s
switch when used with the DIR command [
DIR /s] will tell it to search the subdirectories. However when used with the
FORMAT command (
FORMAT /s), the
/s switch tell it to copy the system files across. You need to know how how some of the more popular switches modify some of the commonly-used DOS commands.
More Help
In the good old days before Windows 9.x came on the scene, DOS had its own dedicated help files.Simply by typing the word
HELP or the
DOS command followed by
HELP [i.e.
FDISK HELP] you could get a much more comprehensive description of a command and its parameters. Windows 9.x keeps most of its DOS commands in the
C:\Windows\Command folder. However, one thing which is missing are the extended DOS help files.
To obtain the necessary
DOS HELP files, click
here (459KB).
This is a zip file containing the three required files (help.com, help.hlp, qbasic.exe). Extract these to your Windows\command folder (Windows 9.x/2K/XP only) and you will able to use the
DOS HELP features as mentioned above.