MS DOS Files And Directories

Latest update on Wednesday 20 January 2021 à 04:16 by Elena Keracheva.

When it comes to computers, data is stored in files. When you run a program, MS-DOS processes the data stored in the file and passes it to the system. In MS-DOS a file can be any size, however the file name is more restricted, it can only have a maximum length of 8 characters plus 3 for the extension.

Supported Characters
File Naming
Organizing Files in Directories or Folders

Supported Characters

Furthermore, the files can only contain the following characters:

Letters A to Z
Numbers 0 to 9
The following special characters: $~! # % & - { } ( ) @ ' _ ^

File Naming

Thus filenames must not contain:

Spaces
Commas
Backslash
Dot (apart from the dot that separates the name and the extension)

Also, the cannot contain any of the following list of reserved names:

CLOCK$
CON
AUX
COM1
COM2
COM3
COM4
LPT1
LPT2
LPT3
NUL
PRN

Organizing Files in Directories or Folders

A hard drive can contain several thousands of files. However, the more files there are, the more difficult it is to manage them: this is when we need to store them in directories. In MS-DOS, directory names are also subject to the same name restrictions as files.

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This document, titled « MS DOS Files And Directories », is available under the Creative Commons license. Any copy, reuse, or modification of the content should be sufficiently credited to CCM (ccm.net).

Commands

Supported Characters

File Naming

Organizing Files in Directories or Folders

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