DOS (Disk Operating System) was the first widely-installed operating
system for personal computers. (Earlier, the same name had been used for an IBM
operating system for a line of business computers.) The first personal computer
version of DOS, called PC-DOS, was developed for IBM by Bill Gates and his new
Microsoft Corporation. He retained the rights to market a Microsoft version,
called MS-DOS. PC-DOS and MS-DOS are almost identical and most users have
referred to either of them as just "DOS." DOS was (and still is) a
non-graphical line-oriented command- or menu-driven operating system, with a
relatively simple interface but not overly "friendly" user interface.
Its prompt to enter a command looks like this: C:>
The first Microsoft Windows operating system was really an application
that ran on top of the MS-DOS operating system. Today, Windows operating
systems continue to support DOS (or a DOS-like user interface) for special
purposes by emulating the operating system. In the 1970s before the personal
computer was invented, IBM had a different and unrelated DOS (Disk Operating
System) that ran on smaller business computers. It was replaced by IBM's VSE
operating system. In computers, a command is a specific order from a user to
the computer's operating system or to an application to perform a service, such
as "Show me all my files" or "Run this program for me."
Operating systems such as DOS that do not have a graphical user interface (GUI)
offer a simple command line interface
in which you type the command on a designated line in a display panel.
A batch file is a text file that contains a sequence of commands for a
computer operating system. It's called a batch file because it batches (bundles
or packages) into a single file a set of commands that would otherwise have to
be presented to the system interactively from a keyboard one at a time. A batch
file is usually created for command sequences for which a user like Professional Website Design has a
repeated need. Commonly needed batch files are often delivered as part of an
operating system. You initiate the sequence of commands in the batch file by
simply entering the name of the batch file on a command line. In the Disk
Operating System (DOS), a batch file has the file name extension
".BAT". (The best known DOS batch file is the AUTOEXEC.BAT file that
initializes DOS when you start the system.) In UNIX-based operating systems, a
batch file is called a shell script. In IBM's mainframe VM operating systems,
it's called an EXEC.
