Source code distribution of FreeCOM - a Command line interface program, which substitutes COMMAND.COM

This software is part of the FreeDOS project. Please visit the freedos web page at http://www.freedos.org/ for more information about FreeDOS.

FreeCOM implements the command processor for the DOS kernel. It is usually the first program started by the kernel and provides a command line interface to interactively run other DOS programs.

Additionally, FreeCOM implements a BATCH file processor allowing scripting of commands as well. See http://help.fdos.org/en/hhstndrd/batch/index.htm for more help with batch commands.

Changes since last official release

How to compile FreeCOM

The COMMAND.COM web site (including source hosting) is at

https://github.com/FDOS/freecom

Bugs may be filed at https://github.com/FDOS/freecom/issues or you may send any bug reports, comments or other info to the one of the FreeDOS mailing lists. For subscription and archives, see:

http://www.freedos.org/forums/

This software has been developed by many people. Older changes are listed along with who provided the change within docs/HISTORY.TXT file and more recent changes can be seen with git log (HISTORY.TXT is only updated periodically).

Please note that this software is separate from the DOS-C kernel and is intended to be compatible with a variety of kernels that implement the DOS API (i.e. it should run on FreeDOS DOS-C kernel and on other DOS kernels such as Microsoft's DOS).

To use this shell, just run the COMMAND.COM file. You can also add this to your CONFIG.SYS file:

SHELL=<shell path><shell filename>

e.g.

SHELL=C:\FREEDOS\COMMAND.COM /P

See http://help.fdos.org/en/hhstndrd/command.htm for description of command line options.

• 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)
• support for error and other messages in multiple languages