Subj : Re: Copy to file or directory?      Help?     Calling MS-Dos?
To   : meirman
From : Charles Dye
Date : Fri Feb 01 2002 10:32 am

From: raster@highfiber.com (Charles Dye)

meirman <meirman@invalid.com> wrote:

>In the statement
>
> xcopy c:\windows\file.dat d:\dir\file.dat
>
>the computer wants to know if my destination was a file or a
>directory.  IIRC, Dos assumes I mean a file, and this is a feature of
>4DOS.
>
>Usually I just tell it, but this time it was part of a .bat file.  Is
>there a paramenter or a way to write the xcopy statement to tell it
>which it is in advance.
>
>  (I got around it with an echo statement, but it seems it should be
>easier than that.)

XCOPY isn't a 4DOS command.  You can still use it, of course; but you may find 
it more convenient to simply use the internal COPY command instead.

>In Dos6/4dos, when I type Help and I get the 4dos Help, I can click on
>"External (dos) Help" or F4 and I get dos6 help.
>
>But in dos7(win98), I get 'not found' or something.  It has to do with
>setting doshelp in the autoexec.bat, but I don't know what to set it
>to.  Can anyone help me.

The Windows 95/98/Me setup program doesn't install the DOS help system by 
default.  You can install it yourself if you like.  Just copy the required 
files from the CD-ROM into your C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND directory.  You need 
HELP.COM, HELP.HLP, and QBASIC.EXE.  Be advised that Microsoft has not updated 
the help files since MS-DOS 6.22; much of the information in there is 
obsolescent.

>I've noticed that one can start 4dos.com from dos7 or dos6, and one
>can start command.com for dos7 when in 4dos.  But I don't think I can
>start command.com (dos6) from 4dos (even when my dos directory in the
>path is dos6).  Is that the way it is supposed to be?

At a guess, you don't have a copy of COMMAND.COM in your search path (i.e. in 
your \DOS directory.)

--
Charles Dye     raster@highfiber.com

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