Special Edition Using Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 4.0

Managing Files from an MS-DOS Prompt

There are things you can do from an MS-DOS prompt that you can't do any other way, and for some people it's the most efficient way to work. By using the DIR command and MS-DOS wildcards, for example, you can quickly display a filtered list of files within a given folder and redirect the output to a text file. It's the only way to quickly rename a group of files by using wildcards, and it's the fastest way to change the extension (and thus the file type) of some types of documents without having to adjust Windows Explorer preferences.

Tip

To see command-line switches for DIR and other MS-DOS commands, type the command followed by /? at the MS-DOS prompt. If the instructions scroll off the top of the screen ...