Re: DOS prompt

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"Steve Hayes" <hayesmstw@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:m6ljb5tv4fq7iqijlfrrl9gkch6qu5vial@xxxxxxx
On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:15:25 -0700 (PDT), Hodges
<mrezoustah@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sep 22, 9:37 pm, Steve Hayes <hayesm...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
DOS stands of "disk operating system".

If your computer has no disks or discs, then no DOS is needed.

But when you see the C:\> prompt (or the A:\> or B:\> or D:\>
prompt) you can then give commands to the disk operating system to
perform functions like copying files from one disk to another, or
from one place on a disk to another place on the same disk, or from
a disk to a disk, or to a virtual drive like a flash drive.

How those commands are carried out depends on the overall operating
system. Windows 98 and below were GUIs that ran on top of an
operating system called MS DOS. Later versions of Windows are
operating systems in their own right, but when you give commands
like xcopy at the command promps, you are still giving commands to
the disk operating system to perform operations on the disks, which
is what the original poster wanted to do.

So all the pedantic twaddle to avoid answering the question is just
a waste of space.

Copying files is a Disk Operation, and therefore it is a function
of the DOS, whether that DOS is built in to Windows or whether
Windows is a GUI running on top of it.

"DOS" is a group of similar operating systems, it is not meant to
represent any operating system that can manipulate disks, since that
would include nearly any OS since the 80s. It is generally
understood to mean MS-DOS or PC-DOS. In reference to Windows, it is
universally understood to mean MS-DOS. When referring to Windows,
it can be safely assumed that somebody referring to "DOS" does not
mean AmigaDOS, Commodore DOS, Atari DOS, or any other form of DOS.
You either don't understand what it is, or realize that you are
wrong and are just arguing for the sake of sounding right.

In reference to Windows XP "DOS" does not refer to MS DOS, since, as
you have pointed outy elsewhere, Windows does not run on MS DOS. But
it does have a command prompt that allows one to perform disk
operations, and so say one can't refer to that as the DOS prompt is
just nit picking.

Exactly, and an action that never does the OP any good when it's used in
the method that started this thread; "there is no DOS" unsupported
comments. Since XP doesn't have an OS-DOS, the most one should need to
explain is a possible aside that to get to that DOS window, you use the
Command Prompt. Command Prompt is a nice, generic term for the process.
Thus, the Command Prompt allows you to use it as a DOS window to issue
most of the MSDOS commands. But it allows you to issue a lot of other,
post-DOS commands too that were added to XP for the Command Mode, to be
used in the Command Prompt.

Cheers,

Twayne`


.

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