Microsoft Corp has MS-DOS as it's trademark. Disk Operating System is what DOS stands for. The reason it was written (it is software) - was to control hardware. That hardware was the IBM PC. When it was introduced to the computing industry in 1981, Microsoft Windows was not even on the drawing board. The user interface for DOS is a plain simple command line. The last update for DOS which was ver 6.22 happened in 1994.

You will be presented with a DOS command prompt on the DOS command line eg C:>. This indicated that DOS will search on drive C which is usually your hard disk for the command you are going to run. If your files you want to run are stored in a different location, then you will need to change to the drive where they reside eg typing D: will get you to a D:> prompt, or E: will get you to a E:> prompt.

Throughout the years there have been many versions of DOS. These include:

1. PC-DOS version

2. MS DOS

3. DR DOS

4. 4 DOS

DOS can be used quite happily with windows. In certain circumstances, if you are familiar enough with DOS, sometimes it can actually be faster to switch over to DOS and issue your command there, than to used the fancy graphical interface in windows. Given this, having a list of simple DOS commands handy can be an advantage.

Another great use for DOS in today's era, is when Windows spits the dummy and simply won't co-operate, DOS commands is what you are left with to communicate with your computer.

Since nearly anything of importance can be done on a command line and a DOS prompt. So a list of simple DOS commands is quite a handy little thing to have nearby.

The main DOS commands used mainly deal with directory and file management. There are 71 DOS commands for the DOS command shell provided with Microsoft Windows XP.

If you have a DOS user manual, this will be your best source when you are searching for a list of simple DOS commands.