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NEW DIR COMMAND SWITCHES
If you are an old time user of computers, you may
remember DOS, the Microsoft precursor to Windows? It's
still around, of course, for there is an entry on every
Windows 9x computer's Start Menu for the MS-DOS Prompt.
Anyway, DOS users will undoubtedly know about the DIR
command, which lists directory and file names in a screen
that is similar to the right pane of Explorer in
"Details" view. Windows 95 introduced a new
version of DOS, version 7.0, and with it were added some
new switches to the DIR command, some of them
undocumented. If you type the normal DIR command at the
DOS prompt, you get a list of directories and files in
the old 8.3 format. "8.3 format" means that it
used to be the case that file/directory names could only
have up to 8 characters followed by a period followed by
up to 3 characters. That means that any long file/folder
name, like "American Online 4.0", is shortened
to something like "Americ~1". But in the
rightmost column of the listing from DIR will be the long
filename. It will look something like this:
AMERIC~1 <DIR> America On Line 4.0
A new switch to the DIR command, namely DIR /Z, will
eliminate that column listing the long file name. Another
new switch, DIR /B, displays only the leftmost column,
but the name there will be a long filename rather than
the 8.3 format.
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