FreeDOS commands quick-reference

FreeDOS turns 24 years old today (June 29)! That's a long time for any open source software project. Thanks to our FreeDOS community for keeping things going. And a special "thank you" to our developers, who continue to add new features and fix old bugs. You truly make FreeDOS better!

To celebrate this year's anniversary, I wrote a "quick reference" for our new users. This reference shows the most common FreeDOS commands, including a few important notes for new users.

You may also want to check out the free ebook we published last year: 23 Years of FreeDOS.

What do you want to do?	How to do it on FreeDOS:
List directory contents	DIR
-in the directory “above”	DIR ..
-in a different directory	DIR C:\FDOS\BIN
Change the current drive	D:
Change the current directory	CD \FDOS\BIN
-“up” one directory	CD ..
Display the contents of a file	TYPE FILE.TXT
-one screen at a time	MORE FILE.TXT
Copy a file	COPY FILE.TXT NEW.TXT
Delete a file	DEL FILE.TXT
Copy a directory and its contents	XCOPY DIR NEWDIR
Delete a directory and its contents	DELTREE MYFILES
Create a new directory	MKDIR NEWDIR
Remove an empty directory	RMDIR MYFILES
Rename a file or directory	REN FILE.TXT FILE.OLD
Show all lines in a file that contain “Hello”	FIND "Hello" FILE.TXT
-without regard for case	FIND /I "Hello" FILE.TXT
Clear the screen	CLS
Edit a text file	EDIT FILE.TXT
View and set the date	DATE
View and set the time	TIME
Show the usage for a program	DIR /? (for most programs)
Get systemwide help	HELP
Show the command history	HISTORY
Show the DOS version	VER

A few things to remember:

• DOS commands and filenames can be upper or lowercase (DIR is the same as dir)
• Pipes (|) are the same on DOS as on Linux
• Output redirection (>) is the same too
• . and .. are the same on DOS as on Linux
• The directory separator is \ (such as C:\ or C:\FDOS or C:\FDOS\BIN)
• File and directory names can only be 8.3 characters long (such as FILENAME.EXT)
• DOS uses letters for each drive (C: is the first hard drive)
• A full path is a drive letter and a directory path

Looking for more? I wrote a full FreeDOS cheat sheet for OpenSource, which you can find here: Celebrating 24 years of FreeDOS: Useful commands cheat sheet.