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_________________________________________________ DOS ASSISTANT Version 2.2 _________________________________________________ MS-DOS TUTORIAL _________________________________________________ PCM SOFTWARE P.O. BOX 1915 GRAFTON, VA 23692 Copyright (C) 1986 - John Hensley - All rights reserved DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 1. CONTENTS MS-DOS COMMANDS ........................ 3 DISK MANAGEMENT COMMANDS ............... 3 SYSTEM MANAGEMENT COMMANDS ............. 4 BATCH COMMANDS ......................... 5 EXECUTING A DOS COMMAND ................ 5 COMMAND LINE EDITING ................... 6 PATHS AND SUBDIRECTORIES ............... 8 WILDCARDS .............................. 10 BATCH FILES ............................ 11 EDLIN .................................. 13 DEBUG .................................. 15 GLOSSARY ............................... 17 DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 2. MS-DOS COMMANDS All of the Disk Operating System (DOS) commands belong in one of three categories: 1. Disk management commands. 2. System management commands. 3. Batch commands. DISK MANAGEMENT COMMANDS These commands are used in working with the disk drives and files contained on your disks: ASSIGN DEL FORMAT RMDIR BACKUP DIR MKDIR SORT CHDIR DISKCOMP PATH SYS CHKDSK DISKCOPY RECOVER TREE COMP FDISK RENAME TYPE COPY FIND RESTORE VOL With the disk management commands you can manipulate your disk files in many ways and insure yourself against the loss of vital information contained in you disk files. The disk management command allow you to: - Check your disks or individual files for damage. - Compare the contents of files or whole disks. - Copy disk files to other disks or directories. - Delete unneeded files. - Display the contents of your disks and directories. - Make duplicate or backup copies of your disks. DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 3. DISK MANAGEMENT COMMANDS cont. - Manage disk subdirectories. - Prepare new disks to accept files. - Recover data from damaged disks and files. - Rename your files. - Sort the contents of disk files. SYSTEM MANAGEMENT COMMANDS These commands control the various settings of the operating system and take care of the basic interfacing between the computer and other devices. BREAK DATE MORE SET CLS EXIT PATH TIME COMMAND GRAPHICS PRINT VER CTTY MODE PROMPT VERIFY The system management commands allow you to control the way information is sent between hardware devices, as well as setting system default values. Some uses of the commands are: - Allows background printing of text files. - Change the standard output devices. - Change the system defaults. - Control output to the video display. - Set the system time and date. DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 4. BATCH COMMANDS These commands allow you to make your own custom DOS commands which may be used to do multiple operations with one command entry. ECHO GOTO PAUSE SHIFT FOR IF REM The batch commands are like a DOS programming language which lets you work with the other DOS commands to do a job in a specific order or if certain conditions are met. Some uses of batch command are: - Conditional execution of DOS commands. - Design automatic start up files. ( AUTOEXEC.BAT ) - Enter a long string of commands with just one word. - Execute a command a multiple number times. - Execute a multiple number of commands on a list of files. EXECUTING A DOS COMMAND A command is executed by entering the command name along with any parameters at the DOS prompt. A>COMMAND parameter parameter If a command is transient (must be loaded from a disk file), you may include a drive designation before the command name to tell DOS what drive contains the command's program file. A>B:COMMAND parameter parameter DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 5. COMMAND LINE EDITING Each time you enter a command and press the "Return" key, DOS saves the command entry and then allows you to use it again the next time you enter a command. DOS also allows you to edit the old command entry by deleting characters from it and inserting characters into it. The command editing features of DOS can save you time by allowing you to use portions of the previous command, or recover commands which did not work properly because a file or command name was incorrectly spelled. The DOS editing keys work as follows: F1 - Copies 1 character from the old command line. F2x - Copies characters from the old command line until a character matching x is encountered. F3 - Copies the remaining characters from the old command line. F4x - Deletes characters from the old command line until a character matching x is encountered. F5 - Deletes the remaining characters from the old command line and starts a new command entry. F6 - Enters an end of file character, "^Z", to the new command entry. Ins - Starts the insert mode so that characters entered do not over write the old command line. Del - Deletes one character from the old command line. Esc - Start a new command entry. DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 6. COMMAND LINE EDITING cont. The following example will show the effect the editing keys have on a new command entry. The command entry represents the previously entered command. A>COPY a:letter.doc b:letter.bak F2t - Copies up to the letter "t". A>COPY a:le F1 - Copies the letter "t". A>COPY a:let F4. - Deletes up to the first period, ".". A>COPY a:let F2t - Copies up to the next letter "t". A>COPY a:let.doc b:le F4. - Deletes up to the next period, ".". A>COPY a:let.doc b:le F3 - Copies the remaining character. A>COPY a:let.doc b:let.bak Each time you type in a character it overwrites one in the old entry. For example if the previous command was: A>COPY b:old.doc a:new.doc Now you want to compare the two files to be sure they are identical. You can type "COMP" to overwrite the "COPY" command and then press F3 to use the remaining characters in the old entry. The new entry will be: A>COMP b:old.doc a:new.doc DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 7. PATHS AND SUBDIRECTORIES MS-DOS versions 2.0 and higher allow you to create and use subdirectories. A subdirectory is just a disk file acting as a directory to contain information about other disk files. The operating system can make use of this information to know where a file is located on the disk, how large the file is and when the file was last used. Each file on a disk has a directory entry somewhere on the disk. To create a subdirectory, enter the command: A>MKDIR newdir Where "newdir" is the name you wish to give the your new subdirectory. The name may contain up to 11 characters. After a subdirectory is created you can copy files into it by using a path name to tell the operating system which directory to copy the files to. A path name is just a directory name preceded by a backslash "\". To copy a file with the name "work.doc" into the new subdirectory, enter the command: A>COPY work.doc \newdir If you want to copy a file from a subdirectory, to another disk or subdirectory, you must identify the subdirectory in which the file resides by prefixing a path name to the file being copied. To copy the file "work.doc" from the subdirectory "newdir" to a disk in drive b:, enter the command: A>COPY newdir\work.doc b: You may use a drive designation when working with subdirectories to show which drive the path is on: A>COPY b:newdir\work.doc a: DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 8. PATHS AND SUBDIRECTORIES cont. You can create and use as many subdirectories as you want, and you can even create a subdirectory within a subdirectory by including a path name when creating a new subdirectory. To create the subdirectory "second" within the subdirectory "newdir" enter the command: A>MKDIR newdir\second If you are working with files in a subdirectory, you may wish to use that subdirectory as the current directory. This will allow you address all of the files in the second directory without prefixing them with the path name. To change the current directory to subdirectory "second" enter the command: A>CD newdir\second To change back to the disk's root or master directory use the command: A>CD ..\.. The two dots ".." always stand for the root directory of the current directory. A root directory is the directory in which the current directory is located in. The path "..\.." means change to the root directory of the root directory. This will put us back in the disk's main directory. Subdirectories may be deleted if they are no longer needed. To remove a subdirectory you must first erase any files in the directory. Use the ERASE or DEL command to erase any files in the subdirectory to be deleted and then remove the subdirectory with the command: A>RMDIR newdir DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 9. WILDCARDS MS-DOS uses the characters "*" and "?" as wildcard characters. Just like a wild card may represent any other card, these two characters may be used to represent any other character in a DOS file name. The "*" character may be used in place one or more characters in a file name. When DOS is given a "*" as a character in a file name, it will accept any file name that matches all the character up to the "*" character as the correct file. The file name "w*.doc" would stand for all file names that started with a "w" and had the extension of ".doc". If a character is included in a file name after the "*", it is discarded. The "*" may also be included in the file name's three character extension, such as "work.do*". If you use the file name "*.*", DOS will interpret it as every file name in the current directory. To copy the files on a diskette in drive a: to a diskette in drive b: you could use the command: A>COPY a:*.* b: DOS uses the "?" as wildcard replacement of a single character in a file name. The file name "????????.???" would be the same as the file name "*.*". If you had the files "1letter.doc", "2letter.doc", "3letter.doc", etc., you could copy all of them from a diskette in drive a: to a diskette in drive b: with the command: A>COPY a:?letter.doc b: The "*" and "?" wildcard characters are very useful but they should be used with caution. If you delete a file with the file name *.* you would be erasing the entire contents of the current directory, so care must be exercised whenever using wildcards in a file name. DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 10. BATCH FILES A batch command is a text file that contains a list of DOS command to be executed. A batch file may be created using Edlin. A batch file must use the extension ".bat" for DOS to be able to use it. These examples show how to create useful batch files with the line editor program Edlin. If you create these file with a text editor other than Edlin, ignore the "*I" and "*E" lines and the lines containing "^Z". Also ignore the remaining "*" characters and everything to the left of them. The "^Z" characters are entered by pressing the "F6" key. Command name: SORTDIR.BAT Usage: SORTDIR [drive:] Action: Sorts the directory of the specified drive and displays it one screen at a time. If no drive is specified, the current drive will be the one used. The DOS work diskette must be in the current drive for the batch file to operate. Example: SORTDIR b: _________________________________________________ A>EDLIN SORTDIR.BAT *I 1:* ECHO OFF 2:* CLS 3:* DIR %1 | SORT | MORE 4:* ^Z *E _________________________________________________ DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 11. BATCH FILES cont. Command name: FILLDIR.BAT Usage: FILLDIR new_dir old_dir [.ext] Action: Creates a new subdirectory with the name "new_dir" and then copies all of the files from the subdirectory "old_dir" into the new directory. If the optional parameter ".ext" is included, only the files with that extension will be copied. If either the new or old directory names are omitted, instructions will be given. Example: FILLDIR personal letters .doc _________________________________________________ A>EDLIN FILLDIR.BAT *I 1:* ECHO off 2:* IF "%1" == "" GOTO ERROR 3:* IF "%2" == "" GOTO ERROR 4:* MKDIR %1 5:* IF "%3" == "" NO_EXT 6:* COPY %2\*%3 \%1 7:* GOTO END 8:* :NO_EXT 9:* COPY %2\*.* \%1 10:* GOTO END 11:* :ERROR 12:* ECHO USAGE: FILLDIR old_dir new_dir [.ext] 13:* :END 14:* ^Z *E _________________________________________________ DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 12. BATCH FILES cont. Command name: AUTOEXEC.BAT Usage: Automatic Action: This is a file which the operating system will automatically execute each time the computer is turned on or rebooted. The batch file will allow you to set the time and date and then it will execute the help program file ASSIST.COM. If you use other memory resident programs you may insert them into the file before line 3. This will allow the help program to be removed from memory should you need the memory for something else. The help program file ASSIST.COM must be on the boot disk with the AUTOEXEC.BAT file for this batch command to operated properly. _________________________________________________ A>EDLIN AUTOEXEC.BAT *I 1:* DATE 2:* TIME 3:* ASSIST 4:* ^Z *E _________________________________________________ DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 13. EDLIN The Edlin program included with your DOS distribution diskette is a text editor which allows working with text files a line at a time. Some uses for the editor are: - Create and edit text files. - Search for text strings in a file. - List text files with each line numbered. - Replace text strings in a file. - Delete lines from a file. Though not as powerful as a full screen word processor, Edlin does have some advantages over the more powerful programs. Some of the advantages of the line editor are: - Fast loading. - Easy to use with few commands to remember. - Requires very little disk space. - Requires very little memory. To use the Edlin program place your DOS work diskette in drive a: and enter: A>EDLIN filename The selected file will be loaded into memory for editing and the Edlin "*" prompt will be displayed. If the file does not exist, it will be created. DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 14. EDLIN cont. Unlike the DOS and Debug commands, most parameters used with Edlin commands are entered before the command: *1,10L The first parameter in this example is a starting line and the second is an ending line. This command would list lines one through ten from the file being edited. To edit a line, enter the line number at the prompt: *14 You will able to type in the new line when the prompt is preceded by a line number and a colon: 14:* Pressing the "Return" key completes the entry of a text line. If you need to insert new lines into an existing file, use the "I" command. To delete lines from a file use the "D" command. If you are working with a file that is to large to fit into memory, you will need to use the "W" command write text from the work buffer to the disk, and then use the "A" command to append more text into the work buffer. Use the "S" command if you are looking for a specific string of text in a file and use the "R" command to replace a string of text with another string. The "R" command may also used to correct misspelled words in a file. DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 15. DEBUG The Debug program included with your DOS distribution diskette is a very powerful tool for programmers who develop programs in 8088 assembly language. Some of the things you can do with the debugger are: - Display data from any memory location. - Display or alter the contents of the cpu registers. - Display the assembly source code of programs. - Enter data directly into any memory location. - Input a byte from a port. - Move blocks of data between memory locations. - Output a byte to a port. - Perform hexadecimal addition and subtraction. - Read disk sectors into memory. - Trace the execution of a program. - Write disk sectors from memory. - Write short assemble language programs. To use the Debug program, place you DOS work diskette in drive a: and enter: A>DEBUG [file] When the Debug prompt ,"-", is displayed, you will be able to enter a Debug command. DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 16. DEBUG cont. The most common use for Debug is tracing out problems in newly created assembly language programs. The best way to debug a program is to use a structured approach. This will allow you to move through sections of the program code which operate as they should, and quickly find the problem sections. A good approach is to unassemble a section of code with the "U" command and look for a convenient break point. A good place for a break is the address following a "CALL". Use the G"address" command where "address" is the offset address of the breakpoint, to execute the program through the called routine. This will allow you to verify that the routine does what it is supposed to. If everything is OK up to the breakpoint, repeat the process until you come upon a routine that is causing trouble. When you find a troublemaking routine you can use the "T" command to step through the routine a line of code at a time. Carefully examination of the register contents after each step will allow you to find which lines of the code are causing the problem. If you come upon an interrupt call while stepping through a routine, use the G"address" command where "address" is the contents of the IP register + 2. This will execute the program up to the address after the interrupt call and speed the debugging process. Remember when working with program files with the .exe extension that the DS register will not address the data segment until it is initialized. Most programs will set DS to the data segment at the start of the code, so stepping through the first few lines of code will usually initialize the register and allow you to use it when addressing the program's data segment. DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 17. GLOSSARY boot The process of initializing the MS-DOS operating system. byte Represents one character to a computer. cpu The central processing unit of a computer. directory A disk file which contains information about other files on the disk. disk A magnetic disk able to store information. May be a flexible floppy diskette or a mass storage hard disk. diskette A flexible computer disk used to store data DOS The Microsoft Disk Operating System which controls the operation of the computer. drive The device which reads and writes data to and from a magnetic disk. file A group of text characters or program steps which are stored on a disk as a single unit. hard disk A drive containing a non-removable magnetic disk which allows storing and retrieving large amounts of data very quickly. hexadecimal A numbering system with a base of 16. KB Represents 1024 characters to a computer. DOS ASSISTANT MS-DOS TUTORIAL Page 18. GLOSSARY cont. memory The part of the computer where information is stored while the computer is operating. It may also be call RAM. monitor A computer's television like video display. parameter A character string which is entered with a DOS command to allow the command to perform a task in a specific manner. program A file containing a series of steps which will be used by the computer to solve a problem or perform a task. resident Refers to a program which has the ability to stay in the computer's memory so that it will not have to be loaded from a disk file each time it is used. software Computer programs.