More as an anwer to Randolf, but he isn't the only one, confusing command line interfaces and DOS repeatedly.
Note, that many of the [DOS] and [MS-DOS] tags suffer from the same mistake: MS-DOS initially had only a textmode, a commandline interface called command.com
+ norton commander for many of us, and a homegrown textmode windows with frames, drawn with ansi.sys, but controllable not only by keyboard, but by the mouse, but more easily with the arrowkeys and hotkeys, too.
Then windows was build on top of DOS (2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11), where an icon for DOS-Box reappeared inside windows, as a name for the command interface inside windows.
But in Windows-NT and in Windows-95 or -98 MS-DOS was abandoned, but a command-interpreter, cmd.exe
(cmd32.exe) still existed, with the same, or nearly the same syntax and keywords. But this was a program, running inside Windows, as other text-style command interpreters, like BASIC, irb (Ruby), scala-repl, psql (Postgresql), sqlplus (oracle), bc, R, rhino, and so on, and so on, running on several platforms.
Calling this MS-DOS-style is misleading, since DOS or MS-DOS whern't the ones which first came up with it. It's much older.
Even on Windows it wasn't restricted to run DOS-commands - a common practice of batch-file writing was, to specify some parameters, before starting a Windows program. For example setting a CLASSPATH, JAVA_HOME, java-parameters like -Xmx and so on for a Java-program.
Many people think command line interfaces are a relict of former times - who don't know the power of processing thousands of files with a few keystrokes. They don't know of wsh and monad either. But for professionals, a command interpreter is on windows nearly as useful as on Unix or Linux. It's not that well known, but it is essential for many administrators.
There is even a port of the gnu-toolchain, with an sh.exe and sed, awk, bc, tail, rev, cat and all that as native win32 apps.
Maybe you can run old DOS-programs under cmd.exe, but you can't run Windows programs in DOS mode, so don't keep telling the people, that cmd.exe is DOS - it isn't. And it isn't DOS-like. What you mean, is an interactive command-line program
, a command-line interface
.
- DOS prompt
- DOS batch files
- DOS-like commands
- DOS-style console
- DOS applications
is almost always misleading terminology. It might be appropriate for an amateur, but if you want your audience to understand, what you're talking about, you should ask yourself: Is it restricted to a special OS, to DOS? Is the CLI-style best named 'DOS-style'? Is this historically correct? Does your audience know DOS at all? Is it helpful in understanding? Do those programs really run on DOS?
You need the right expressions, sharp as the knife of a surgeon, to explain complicated things. Wrong expressions provoke wrong impressions in the brain of your audience. Sloppy expressions are worse than nothing. Avoid them. Use CLI
if command-line interface is to long for you to type.
Correct misleading tags on SU, SE and other sides.
No, it does not. The last consumer OS that relied on MS-DOS was Windows Me. Windows XP, Vista, 7, and later are all built on the Windows NT architecture. – bwDraco – 2016-10-29T22:35:54.600
The end of this discussion looks interesting.
– user2284570 – 2013-12-17T21:19:56.837