FreeCom Command Line Interface ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ About ~~~~~ This software is part of the FreeDOS project. Please email fd-dev@topica.com for more information, or visit the freedos archive at "http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files". Also, visit our web page at http://www.freedos.org/. The command.com web site is at http://freedos.sourceforge.net/freecom Please send any bug reports, comments or other info to: fd-command@topica.com (command.com development mailing list) This software has been developed by many people, which are enlisted within HISTORY.TXT now. Please note that this software is separate from the DOS-C kernel and may or may not work properly under it. Of course I am making every effort to make it compatible. Installation ~~~~~~~~~~~~ To use this shell, just run the COMMAND.COM file. You can also add this to your CONFIG.SYS file: SHELL= e.g. SHELL=C:\FREEDOS\COMMAND.COM /P Current Features ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - environment handling with prompt and path support - directory utilities - command-line history with doskey-like features + filename completion (TAB) - batch file processing - input/output redirection and piping - loadhigh support - alias support - flow control (IF, FOR, GOTO, labels) - non-complete multi language support Command Line Syntax, Useage, Switches and Options ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ COMMAND.COM [ path [ console ] ] [{ option }] [ '/' ( K | C ) «commandline» ] If present, the first non-option argument specifies the location in which FreeCOM resides. This location is later stored in the environment variable COMSPEC. Since DOS3+ this option is no longer necessary to find the shell invoked during the boot process, but it may be used to let the system boot a primary shell from one location, but use a shell of the same version from a different location later on. One shallt not point to a RAMdisk at this time, because FreeCOM needs to reload certain information relatively early during execution, before AUTOEXEC.BAT had been executed, in which, normally, FreeCOM is copied into the RAMdisk. For convinience FreeCOM checks, if at the given location a FreeCOM exists and is accessable, if not, the given location is ignored. Also, the standard requires to specify a path only, but FreeCOM accepts an absolute filename, so accepting that FreeCOM is not necessarily named COMMAND.COM. The second non-option argument, if present, specifies the console FreeCOM shall enable. This setting is system-wide and is not limited to FreeCOM or just this particular process tree. In its result, this argument is identical to the CTTY command. FreeCOM knows the following options: /?: Issues a help screen, then exists. /!: Enable/disable debugging support, if compiled to FreeCOM. /Y: Enables trace/single step mode. This mode is deaktivated when the user prompt has been reached. /D: Disables to parse AUTOEXEC.BAT, even if the /P option is present. This switch is usually set by the kernel, when F% had been pressed during bootup. /F: Enables autofail of Critical Errors; then instead of displaying the Abort/Retry/Ignore/Fail dialog, Critical Errors are automatically answered with Fail. /P: Installs a primary copy of FreeCOM. Such instance: cannot be terminated with the EXIT command. executes the AUTOEXEC.BAT script before any other command. The /P option may have an argument to specify an alternate name for the AUTOEXEC script, e.g.: /P:FDAUTO.BAT. /E: Sets another size of the environment segment, in which all the environment variables are stored, e.g.: /E:1024. /L: Sets the size of the internal command buffer. Note: This option is ignored currently, the internal buffer always defaults to 512 bytes. /U Sets the size of the internal user input buffer. Note: This option is ignored currently. The input buffer always defaults to 255 bytes, which is the maximum. /LOW: Forces to load FreeCOM low. Note: Currently this option has no effect, because no part of FreeCOM is loaded high. /MSG: Installs the message server. Note: Because the message server is not used nowadays, this option forces to permanently load FreeCOM's messages into memory. /SWAP: Toggles, if to default to swapping or not; due to different default values of this internal flag, it is recommended to always prefix the option with '+' to enable or '-' to disable swapping. The options /K and /C are special cases and do not behave as normal options does. They are exclusive and all characters at the right side of such option (except an optional argument sign) specify a command to execute, e.g.: /C DIR /s, /C=DIR /s, and /CDIR /s do behave exactly the same and execuate the command DIR /s. If these options are used in conjunction with the /P option, the AUTOEXEC.BAT script is executed prior executing the specified command. In opposite to /C the /K option enters the interactive shell prompt after executing the specified command. Boolean options, which can only be enabled or disabled, may be prefixed by '+' to enable or '-' to disable it.