Dealing with DOS - Part 3
Carrying on with the series on dealing with DOS, we have some more commands for you. The whole series is aimed at giving you commands that are useful when Windows decides to sulk and refuses to load. The commands can be used to (often) copy files, rescue data and even rescue your whole system!
The TYPE Command
The TYPE command is used to view the contents of a file.
The format is: TYPE file_name
For example, to see the contents of your start up system file, AUTOEXEC.BAT, enter the following command from the root directory of drive C:
TYPE AUTOEXEC.BAT
It should be noted that this command displays files as ASCII text. That means, for certain files, complete gibberish will be displayed if they are "type'd". This is because not all files contain straight ASCII data; rather, they contain machine instructions or data to display a picture. Files that end in .TXT will usually display correctly. (Useful for reading those README files when things go wrong!)
The EDIT Command
With the same format as the TYPE command, EDIT will take you that one stage further and not only let you see the contents but edit (change) the contents as well. It is the DOS equivalent of Notepad. Unlike Notepad, EDIT can handle extremely large files (Notepad has a 45KB limit)
Extreme caution should be taken with this command as it is used to change the contents of files. Do this with some files and there can be serious repercussions! If you are experimenting with EDIT then copy a text file and play around with that.
If you run EDIT from a DOS window you will get mouse support. Note that this may not be the case if you boot straight into DOS without loading windows. Mouse support will only be present if you run / load your mouse driver program. (Most modern PC's do NOT load the mouse driver until Windows has loaded).
To access the menus at the top of the EDIT screen, press and hold the ALT key and then press the 1st letter of the menu item you want. So, to access the File menu, ALT + f would be used.
One of the most useful facilities of EDIT is the ability to search for a string of characters within a file. This can be complete or a partial word. Very useful for those of you manipulating data files that you don't want loaded into other programs that may corrupt their structure.
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