>>>> Nick Demos <[log in to unmask]> 04/09/01 04:28PM wrote:
>>>[attribution lost wrote...]
>> No.  You can certainly open a Command Line window in Windows 2000 and in
>> Windows XP.  Except that you are not running DOS, you are running Windows
>> NT.  A lot of (uninformed) people refer to it as a DOS box in Windows NT.
>>  It is not, it is a command line interface.
>>
>OK, I'll bite.  HOW do you open a command line interface in Windows 2000?

On Mon, 9 Apr 2001 16:33:17 -0700, Arthur Frank <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Select Start | Run, type cmd in the Open field, and click OK.  Also, it
> should be located at Start | Programs | Accessories | Command Prompt.
>
> I'm not sure of all of the technical differences, but running 'cmd' is
> different from running 'command', which is also available in Windows
> 2000.  I believe that cmd is the completely 32-bit command prompt, while
> command is 16-bit.

You beat me by a few moments, having walked over to the local w2k server,
logged in, etc., and selected "run" and typed in command.com.  I'll ditto
Arthur's remark about COMMAND being more-or-less the 16-bit version of the
command interpreter as the directory listing showed "mangled names" while
under cmd the full name was displayed.

Of course, the whole irony of the situation is the word DOS itself --
technically, "DOS" is JUST the three-letter-acronym for "Disk Operating
System", not any one specific implementation of said OS.  This can be
legally run up the semantic flagpole to make "Linux is (a) DOS" a true
statement.  [or to keep it On-Topic for this list, "MPE/iX is a DOS" :) ]

However, "common usage" of the word "DOS" has come to mean a particular
implementation of an operating system, however even the "particular
implementation" can change depending upon the group of people involved
[err, umm, doesn't some if IBM's "big iron" run "DOS" as it is called by
people who program them?]

If you want to be the most "retentatively-correct", you would have to call
the "dos box" the "command interpreter box", with the understanding that
the "command interpreter" is but one part of the human-machine interface.
Under Unix systems, the "command interpreter" is more commonly called a
shell.  On the HP3000, we've always "known" is was the "command
interpreter", and later releases of the OS further emphasized it by
explicitly naming it "CI.PUB.SYS".  On OS/2 and Microsoft-based operating
systems, the CI is command.com (and, I suspect, "cmd" running on win/NT and
variants may even be a descendant of the IBM/Microsoft co-op that created
OS/2 in the first place...)

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