dir (command)

In computing, dir (directory) is a command in various computer operating systems used for computer file and directory listing.[1] It is one of the basic commands to help navigate the file system. The command is usually implemented as an internal command in the command-line interpreter (shell). On some systems, a more graphical representation of the directory structure can be displayed using the tree command.

dir
The SpartaDOS X DIR command
Developer(s)DEC, DR, Intel, Cromemco, MetaComCo, Microsoft, IBM, ICD, Inc.
Operating systemCP/M, MP/M, ISIS-II, iRMX 86, CDOS, TRIPOS, DOS, MSX-DOS, SISNE plus, 4690 OS, OS/2, Windows, Singularity, ReactOS, AROS, VMS, RT-11, RSX-11, OS/8
TypeCommand
LicenseCP/M, MP/M: BSD-like
MS-DOS: MIT
ReactOS: GPL

Implementations

Screenshot showing the "Abort, Retry, Fail?" prompt on MS-DOS.

The command is available in the command-line interface (CLI) of the operating systems Digital Research CP/M,[2] MP/M,[3] Intel ISIS-II,[4] iRMX 86,[5] Cromemco CDOS,[6] MetaComCo TRIPOS,[7] DOS, IBM/Toshiba 4690 OS,[8] IBM OS/2,[9] Microsoft Windows[10], Singularity, ReactOS[11], GNU[12], AROS[13] and in the DCL command-line interface used on DEC VMS, RT-11 and RSX-11. It is also supplied with OS/8 as a CUSP (Commonly-Used System Program).

The dir command is supported by Tim Paterson's SCP 86-DOS.[14] On MS-DOS, the command is available in versions 1 and later.[15] It is also available in the open source MS-DOS emulator DOSBox. MS-DOS prompts "Abort, Retry, Fail?" after being commanded to list a directory with no diskette in the drive.

The numerical computing environments MATLAB and GNU Octave include a dir function with similar functionality.[16][17]

Examples

Screenshot showing a CP/M 3.0 directory listing on a Commodore 128 home computer.
Screenshot of a Microsoft Windows Command Prompt window showing a directory listing.

DOS, Windows, ReactOS

List all files and directories in the current working directory.

dir

List any text files and batch files (filename extension ".txt" or ".bat").

dir *.txt *.bat

Recursively list all files and directories in the specified directory and any subdirectories, in wide format, pausing after each screen of output. The directory name is enclosed in double-quotes, to prevent it from being interpreted is as two separate command-line options because it contains a whitespace character.

dir /s /w /p "C:\My Documents"

Unices

dir is not a Unix command; Unix has the analogous ls command instead. The GNU operating system, however, has a dir command that "is equivalent to ls -C -b; that is, by default files are listed in columns, sorted vertically, and special characters are represented by backslash escape sequences".[18]

gollark: Also Intel, once they use the Management Engine to get access to every modern Intel computer on the planet and steal all their classified data. They can totally do that.
gollark: Yes, probably the military contractors.
gollark: I mean, the big tech companies around now are Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and to be honest probably some random Chinese ones I don't really know about.
gollark: Amazon Matrix.
gollark: Amazon Triangular Number

See also

References

  1. Rügheimer, Hannes; Spanik, Christian (October 22, 1988). "AmigaDOS quick reference". Grand Rapids, Mi : Abacus via Internet Archive.
  2. "Operating manual" (PDF). cpm.z80.de. Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  3. Digital Research (1981-09-25). MP/M-86 Operating System - User's Guide (PDF) (1 ed.). Pacific Grove, CA, USA: Digital Research. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-01-04. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  4. ISIS II Users Guide
  5. iRMX™86 INTRODUCTION AND OPERATOR'S REFERENCE MANUAL For Release 6
  6. CDOS USER'S MANUAL
  7. "Introduction to Tripos" (PDF). Retrieved 2019-10-22.
  8. "JaTomes Help - OS/2 Commands". www.jatomes.com.
  9. "MS-DOS and Windows command line dir command". www.computerhope.com.
  10. "GitHub - reactos/reactos: A free Windows-compatible Operating System". October 22, 2019 via GitHub.
  11. "GNU Coreutils Manual". Free Software Foundation.
  12. "AROS Research Operating System". aros.sourceforge.net.
  13. 86-DOS - Disk Operating System for the 8086 - User's Manual (PDF). Version 0.3 (Preliminary ed.). Seattle, Washington, USA: Seattle Computer Products, Inc. 1980. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-07-14. Retrieved 2019-07-14. (59 pages)
  14. Wolverton, Van (2003). Running MS-DOS Version 6.22 (20th Anniversary Edition), 6th Revised edition. Microsoft Press. ISBN 0-7356-1812-7.
  15. "List folder contents - MATLAB dir". www.mathworks.com.
  16. "Function Reference: dir". octave.sourceforge.io.
  17. dir invocation (GNU coreutils) at www.gnu.org

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.