How can I cd to a long path in DOS 6.22?

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I have a legacy PC which I have installed DOS 6.22 onto. I'm not sure what specific version this is, but it had CD drivers included, so I'm suspecting it wasn't exactly "bare bones".

I created a CD with some files I want to access from that machine, but some folders unfortunately have more than 8 characters in length. Supposedly using first 6 characters followed by ~1 is supposed to change my directory, but this doesn't want to work. There's no /X dir option either. Whatever I've tried, I just got Invalid directory back.

When I'm doing the dir on the folder, all filenames seem to be truncated to 8 characters with no indication that any of then might be over the limit. cd to the short ones works.

What could be at fault here? Is there any way for me to access those files?

Bartek Banachewicz

Posted 2018-03-27T20:13:13.793

Reputation: 305

1if you just do a dir how are the names listed? – EBGreen – 2018-03-27T20:18:31.693

@EBGreen The first 8 characters are shown. I'll add that to the question. – Bartek Banachewicz – 2018-03-27T20:21:53.663

So if you pick one of those and type CD FOOBAR01 (assuming FOOBAR01 is one of them) what happens? – EBGreen – 2018-03-27T20:24:50.973

@EBGreen Invalid directory. – Bartek Banachewicz – 2018-03-27T20:26:10.857

To whoever voted this "too broad": I am willing to provide as much specific information about my problem as necessary, I just don't know what could be helpful. This is a physical machine so unfortunately can't readily share it. I could provide the DOS FDD image I used if that would help. – Bartek Banachewicz – 2018-03-27T20:27:24.237

What do you get from ver? – EBGreen – 2018-03-27T20:52:08.167

Ok, I've hacked around a bit and switched to FreeDOS. The utility SHSUCDX used by that to replace MSCDEX has a very interesting /~ option to generate tildes (which works). I'll self-answer this once I know enough about the issue. – Bartek Banachewicz – 2018-03-27T22:30:02.263

In Win 10 CMD, wild cards work; e.g. if in C:\Windows\ then cd sys* gets to C:\Windoews\System32. Not sure if that worked in DOS. – DrMoishe Pippik – 2018-03-28T01:40:36.627

Answers

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Do a DIR /ad to confirm the directory is a listing of directories only. It could be you're trying to change directory into what it thinks is a file.

If they are all indeed directories, you should be able to short-cut the CD command to as many letters as required for it to be unique, followed by an asterisk, i.e.

cd FOOBAR*

It should, at the very least, change into the first matching directory it finds.

Bill Hileman

Posted 2018-03-27T20:13:13.793

Reputation: 757

Asked: 2018-03-27T20:13:13.793

Viewed: 150 times

Active: 2018-03-27T20:36:57.890