part of The FreeDOS Project

Get around with CD and DIR

Use these two commands to navigate DOS on the command line.

New users often ask, "I installed FreeDOS, but how do I use it?" If you haven't used DOS before, the blinking C:\> DOS prompt can seem a little unfriendly. And maybe scary. This gentle introduction to FreeDOS should get you started and how to get around and how to look at files.

The prompt

First, let's look at the empty prompt and what it means.

C:>

DOS is a disk operating system created when personal computers ran from floppy disks. Even when computers supported hard drives, it was common in the 1980s and 1990s to switch frequently between the different drives. For example, you might make a backup copy of your most important files to a floppy disk.

DOS referenced each drive by a letter. Early PCs could have only two floppy drives, which were assigned as the A: and B: drives. The first partition on the first hard drive was the C: drive, and so on for other drives. The C: in the prompt means you are using the first partition on the first hard drive.

Starting with PC-DOS 2.0 in 1983, DOS also supported directories and subdirectories, much like the directories and subdirectories on Linux filesystems. But unlike Linux, DOS directory names are delimited by \ instead of /. Putting that together with the drive letter, the C:\ in the prompt means you are in the top, or root, directory of the C: drive.

The > is the literal prompt where you type your DOS commands, like the $ prompt on many Linux shells. The part before the > tells you the current working directory, and you type commands at the > prompt.

Getting around

The basics of navigating through directories in DOS are just two commands: CD and DIR.

DIR

When you want to see the contents of the current directory, use the DIR command. Since DOS commands are not case-sensitive, you could also type dir. By default, DOS displays the details of every file and subdirectory, including the name, extension, size, and last modified date and time.

C:\>dir
 Volume in drive C is FREEDOS2024
 Volume Serial Number is 0F5A-150D

 Directory of C:\

APPS                 <DIR>  10-01-2024  9:05a
DEVEL                <DIR>  10-01-2024  8:44a
FREEDOS              <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
COMMAND  COM        85,480  07-10-2021  7:28p
FDAUTO   BAT         2,562  10-01-2024  9:06a
FDCONFIG SYS           947  10-01-2024  1:38p
KERNEL   SYS        46,256  10-01-2024  5:40a
         4 file(s)        135,245 bytes
         3 dir(s)     194,658,304 bytes free

If you don't want the extra details about individual file sizes, you can display a "wide" directory by using the /w option with the DIR command.

C:\>dir /w
 Volume in drive C is FREEDOS2024
 Volume Serial Number is 0F5A-150D

 Directory of C:\

[APPS]         [DEVEL]        [FREEDOS]      COMMAND.COM    FDAUTO.BAT
FDCONFIG.SYS   KERNEL.SYS
         4 file(s)        135,245 bytes
         3 dir(s)     194,658,304 bytes free

You can look inside a specific subdirectory by passing the pathname as a parameter to DIR. Note that DOS names are case-insensitive. DOS will usually display files and directories in all uppercase, but you can equally reference them in lowercase.

C:\>dir freedos
 Volume in drive C is FREEDOS2024
 Volume Serial Number is 0F5A-150D

 Directory of C:\FREEDOS

.                    <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
..                   <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
APPINFO              <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
BIN                  <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
CPI                  <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
DOC                  <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
HELP                 <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
LINKS                <DIR>  10-01-2024  8:45a
NLS                  <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
PACKAGES             <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
TEMP                 <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
BOOT     BSS           512  10-01-2024  1:38p
BOOT     MBR           512  10-01-2024  1:38p
VERSION  FDI            53  10-01-2024  1:38p
         3 file(s)          1,077 bytes
        11 dir(s)     194,658,304 bytes free

CD

Once you can see the contents of a directory, you can "move into" any other directory. On DOS, you change your working directory with the CHDIR command, also abbreviated as CD. You can change into a subdirectory with a command like CD CHOICE or into a new path with CD \FREEDOS\DOS\CHOICE

C:\FREEDOS>cd doc
C:\FREEDOS\DOC>cd choice
C:\FREEDOS\DOC\CHOICE>dir
 Volume in drive C is FREEDOS2024
 Volume Serial Number is 0F5A-150D

 Directory of C:\FREEDOS\DOC\CHOICE

.                    <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
..                   <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
BUGS                   186  07-15-2003  7:24a
INSTALL                394  04-16-2002  4:39p
NEWS                 2,826  07-15-2003  7:29a
README                 426  04-16-2002  4:38p
         4 file(s)          3,832 bytes
         2 dir(s)     194,658,304 bytes free

DOS uses . to represent the current directory, and .. for the parent directory (one level "up" from the current directory). You can combine these. For example, CD .. changes to the parent directory, and CD ..\.. moves you two levels "up" from the current directory.

You can use CD - to jump back to your previous working directory. That is handy after you change into a new path to do one thing and want to go back to your previous work.

C:\FREEDOS\DOC\CHOICE>cd \
C:\>cd -
C:\FREEDOS\DOC\CHOICE>cd ..
C:\FREEDOS\DOC>cd ..\..
C:\>dir
 Volume in drive C is FREEDOS2024
 Volume Serial Number is 0F5A-150D

 Directory of C:\

APPS                 <DIR>  10-01-2024  9:05a
DEVEL                <DIR>  10-01-2024  8:44a
FREEDOS              <DIR>  10-01-2024  1:37p
COMMAND  COM        85,480  07-10-2021  7:28p
FDAUTO   BAT         2,562  10-01-2024  9:06a
FDCONFIG SYS           947  10-01-2024  1:38p
KERNEL   SYS        46,256  10-01-2024  5:40a
         4 file(s)        135,245 bytes
         3 dir(s)     194,658,304 bytes free

Drive letters

Remember that DOS assigns the first partition on the first hard drive as the C: drive, and so on for other drive letters. On modern systems, people rarely divide a hard drive with multiple DOS partitions; they simply use the whole disk, or as much of it as they can assign to DOS. Today, C: is usually the first hard drive, and D: is usually another hard drive or the CD-ROM drive. Other network drives can be mapped to other letters, such as E: or Z: or however you want to organize them.

Changing drives is easy under DOS. Just type the drive letter followed by a colon (:) on the command line, and DOS will change to that working drive. For example:

C:\>D:
D:\>dir /w
 Volume in drive D is DATA
 Volume Serial Number is 373B-1700

 Directory of D:\

[123]          [ABILITY]      [ASEASY]       [DOCS]         [GALAXY]
[GAMES]        [QUATTRO]      [SRC]          [TC]           [TEMP]
[VC]           [WORD]         [WS400]
         0 file(s)              0 bytes
        13 dir(s)     438,648,832 bytes free

Be careful that you don't try to change to a drive that doesn't exist. DOS may set the working drive, but if you try to do anything there you'll get the somewhat infamous "Abort, Retry, Fail" DOS error message.

Other commands to try

With the CD and DIR commands, you have the basics of DOS navigation. These commands allow you to find your way around DOS directories and see what other subdirectories and files exist. Once you are comfortable with basic navigation, you might also try these other basic DOS commands:

In FreeDOS, you can use the /? parameter to get brief instructions to use each command. Or you can type HELP to use an interactive help system.

This is adapted from [A gentle introduction to FreeDOS][https://opensource.com/article/18/4/gentle-introduction-freedos] by Jim Hall.