A CMD DOS Primer

From time to time, CMD DOS and JiffyDOS syntax questions come up in the Commodore groups. Here are some examples of the more detailed usages that I've found helpful. Note that many of these are commands for native mode partitions, and can't be used on 1541 / 1571 / 1581 emulation partitions.

It all makes sense if you remember that CMD DOS is just an extension of standard Commodore DOS, except that the "drive number" portion of the Commodore syntax (e.g. the 0 in S0:SCRATCHFILE) is replaced by a partition number (optionally followed by a directory path). Starting a directory path with two slashes means that you are specifying the path from the root of the partition.

If you have a question or find any errors, please email me (shadowm at lyonlabs.org).

list partitions	`@$=P`
change to partition 16	`@CP16`
rename a partition	`@R-P:NEWNAME=OLDNAME`
create a directory (current drive and partition)	`@MD:SUBDIR`
create a directory in partition 12	`@MD12:SUBDIR`
create a directory in partition 12, in parent dir PARENT	`@MD12//PARENT/:SUBDIR`
remove a directory (as above, must be empty)	`@RD:SUBDIR`
change to directory SUBDIR	`@CD//SUBDIR`
change to parent directory	`@CD←` (back-arrow)
show program files, or S for sequential files, U for USR files, B for subdirectories ("branches"), etc.	`@$:*=P`
show files in subdirectory SUBDIR of current dir	`@$/SUBDIR/:*`
show files in subdirectory //SUBDIR/SUB2 (use if current dir is e.g. //OTHERDIR)	`@$//SUBDIR/SUB2/:*`
show files in subdirectory SUBDIR/SUB2 of partition 18	`@$18//SUBDIR/SUB2/:*`
show files with timestamps	`@$=T`
show files with timestamps (long)	`@$=T:*=L`
show files younger than 01/27/08	`@$=T:*=<01/27/08`

copy FILENAME from partition 1 to partition 2	`@C2//:FILENAME=1//:FILENAME`
copy FIND from partition 18, dir CMD to partition 16, dir TEMP	`@C16//TEMP/:FIND=18//CMD/:FIND`
copy TEST from dir TEMP to dir TEMP2 of current partition	`@C//TEMP2/:TEST=//TEMP/:TEST`
Remember: target first, then source.