Two versions of dos command prompt

[jackson6612]

Hi

If I write the command "cmd" I get a different version of Command Prompt from when I enter the command "command". More or less they're the same but start with different 'initial' command string. What's the difference between the two? Please help me. Thanks.

Video:

 

[story645]

command.com is the original dos prompt, cmd.exe is the native dos prompt.

google turns up lots of info on this.

 

[jackson6612]

This Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DOS_commands explain the COPY command as such:

copy

Copies files from one location to another. The destination defaults to the current directory. If multiple source files are indicated, the destination must be a directory, or an error will result.

Syntax:
copy from [source\filename] to [destination\folder]

1: But the syntax with "from" and "to" doesn't work. One has to do without the two. Does Wikipedia have it wrong, or is it me who is interpreting it wrongly?

2: How do I indicate multiple files instead of one, I mean what would be the syntax look like then?

Please help.

 

[TylerH]

command.com is the 16bit command prompt used in DOS(which was 16bit), and that cmd.exe is the 32bit executable meant to emulate command.com for the later 32bit Windows.

 

[Redbelly98]

2: How do I indicate multiple files instead of one, I mean what would be the syntax look like then?

As far as I remember, multiple files could be indicated with the wildcard "*" character. For example, *.txt would refer to all files (in the current directory) with a .txt extension. Or a*.* would refer to all files beginning with the letter a. And *.* means all files.

 

[story645]

1: But the syntax with "from" and "to" doesn't work. One has to do without the two. Does Wikipedia have it wrong, or is it me who is interpreting it wrongly?

Some combination, but you can edit it if you think it's unclear. You can always type help copy into the prompt for the usage anyway.

As far as I remember, multiple files could be indicated with the wildcard "*" character. For example, *.txt would refer to all files (in the current directory) with a .txt extension. Or a*.* would refer to all files beginning with the letter a.

Just tested this and yeah it works as expected. For example, if you've got a list of data files by year and you only want files from the 90s, you'd do
copy "*199*" dest