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List of DOS commands

list of Disk Operating System commands

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ2481838
Source-derived summary

This article lists notable commands provided by the MS-DOS disk operating system (DOS), especially as used on an IBM PC compatible computer. Other DOS variants as well as the legacy Windows shell, Command Prompt (cmd.exe), provide many of these commands. Many other DOS variants are informally called DOS, but are not included in the scope of the list. The highly related variant, IBM PC DOS, is included. The list is not intended to be exhaustive, but does include commands covering the various releases.

Each command is implemented either as built-in to the command interpreter, COMMAND.COM, or as an external program. Although prevailing style is to write command names in all caps, the interpreter matches ignoring case.

Commands

APPEND

Sets the path to be searched for data files or displays the current search path.

The APPEND command is similar to the PATH command that tells DOS where to search for program files (files with a .COM, . EXE, or .BAT file name extension).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “List of DOS commands” is list of Disk Operating System commands. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through List, commands and list, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current 162-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, List, commands and list is the immediate research focus.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2481838. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

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This entry incorporates text from List of DOS commands” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.