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| '''FreeCOM''' is the standard FreeDOS command shell that replaces [[COMMAND.COM]] from standard DOS. | | The '''FreeDOS Beta 4 "Lemur"''' distribution was released 29 December 1999. |
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| The main duty of FreeCOM is to prompt the user to enter commands, which are interpreted, processed directly by FreeCOM or executed as executable files.
| | == Codename == |
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| Those commands processed by FreeCOM directly are called '''Internal Commands'''. Non-internal commands which cannot be processed by FreeCOM directly are called '''External Commands''', because FreeCOM will search for files equally named as typed-in.
| | Jim always wanted to have a mascot for the FreeDOS Project (it's a gimmick.) Linux had the penguin, BSD had the daemon, and GNU had the gnu. Jim hadn't pushed the idea of officially adopting a FreeDOS mascot because he didn't want to get distracted by the noise that would create. Jim named the Lemur distribution as a way of "adopting" a mascot when we really didn't. Plus, Jim always thought lemurs looked cool. |
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| Besides to implement certain commands FreeCOM offers other features.
| | == History == |
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| == Command line usage ==
| | This Wayback snapshot says "The Beta4 distribution was released on 29 Dec 1999." Assume that is the correct date. |
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| COMMAND.COM [ path [ console ] ] [{ option }] [ '/' ( K | C ) commandline ]
| | == Announcement == |
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| If present, the first non-option argument specifies the location in which FreeCOM resides. This location is later stored in the environment variable COMSPEC. Since DOS3+ this option is no longer necessary to find the shell invoked during the boot process, but it may be used to let the system boot a primary shell from one location, but use a shell of the same version from a different location later on.
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| One shallt not point to a RAMdisk at this time, because FreeCOM needs to reload certain information relatively early during execution, before AUTOEXEC.BAT had been executed, in which, normally, FreeCOM is copied into the RAMdisk.
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| For convinience FreeCOM checks, if at the given location a FreeCOM exists and is accessable, if not, the given location is ignored. Also, the standard requires to specify a path only, but FreeCOM accepts an absolute filename, so accepting that FreeCOM is not necessarily named COMMAND.COM.
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| The second non-option argument, if present, specifies the console FreeCOM shall enable. This setting is system-wide and is not limited to FreeCOM or just this particular process tree. In its result, this argument is identical to the CTTY command.
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| FreeCOM knows the following options:
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| {| class="wikitable"
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| |+ FreeCOM command line options
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| ! Option !! Meaning
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| | /? || Issues a help screen, then exists
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| | /! || Enable/disable debugging support, if compiled to FreeCOM
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| |-
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| | /Y || Enables trace/single step mode, deacticated when the user prompt has been reached
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| | /D || Disables to parse AUTOEXEC.BAT, even if the /P option is present (usually set by the kernel, when F5 had been pressed during bootup)
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| | /F || Enables autofail of Critical Errors; then instead of displaying the '''Abort/Retry/Ignore/Fail''' dialog, Critical Errors are automatically answered with Fail
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| | /P || Installs a primary copy of FreeCOM. The option may have an argument to specify an alternate name for the AUTOEXEC.BAT script, such as '''/P:FDAUTO.BAT'''. This primary shell cannot be terminated with the EXIT command and always executes the AUTOEXEC.BAT script before any other command.
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| | /E || Sets another size of the environment segment (such as such as '''/E:1024''') in which all the environment variables are stored
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| | /L || Sets the size of the internal command buffer (This option is ignored currently, the internal buffer always defaults to 512 bytes)
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| | /U || Sets the size of the internal user input buffer (This option is ignored currently. The input buffer always defaults to 255 bytes, which is the maximum)
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| | /LOW || Forces to load FreeCOM low (Currently this option has no effect, because no part of FreeCOM is loaded high)
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| | /MSG || Installs the message server (Because the message server is not used nowadays, this option forces to permanently load FreeCOM's messages into memory)
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| | /SWAP || Toggles, if to default to swapping or not; due to different default values of this internal flag, it is recommended to always prefix the option with '+' to enable or '-' to disable swapping
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| |}
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| The options /K and /C are special cases and do not behave as normal options does. They are exclusive and all characters at the right side of such option (except an optional argument sign) specify a command to execute, e.g.: /C DIR /s, /C=DIR /s, and /CDIR /s do behave exactly the same and execuate the command DIR /s.
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| If these options are used in conjunction with the /P option, the AUTOEXEC.BAT script is executed prior executing the specified command.
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| In opposite to /K the /C option does not enter the interactive shell prompt after executing the specified command unless the /P options is present, too.
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| Boolean options, which can only be enabled or disabled, may be prefixed by '+' to enable or '-' to disable it.
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