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
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