Tutorial: Introduction to the Command Line

2. Viewing the contents of a directory

Start the online DOS emulator if you haven't done yet.

C:\> is called the command prompt. It shows your current working directory (on Windows this is called a folder). In this case it means that you are at drive C (which is called the root). You cannot delete or edit the command prompt. You'll have to type the commands after the > of the command prompt.

1. Type the following command after the prompt:
doskey
After typing a command press the <ENTER> key to execute the command.

In the instructions we use <> to indicate that you have to press a key.

In this case we activated the logging of the command history that we'll use and explain further in Chapter 6.

We will view the contents of a directory by using the dir command. The dir command stands for "directory".

2. Type the following command after the prompt:

dir <ENTER>

You will see this:

This is called a directory list. A directory list is a list of all the files and subdirectories that a directory contains. If you type dir /? you will see all options of the dir command. For example, if you type dir /w you will see the directory listing in columns.

3. Try these commands to see what is on the C drive.