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Implementations

Although syntax, semantics and implementations vary, a dir command is available in the command-line interface (CLI) of the operating systems Digital Research CP/M,² MP/M,³ Intel ISIS-II,⁴ iRMX 86,⁵ Cromemco CDOS,⁶ MetaComCo TRIPOS,⁷ DOS, IBM/Toshiba 4690 OS,⁸ IBM OS/2,⁹ Microsoft Windows,¹⁰ Singularity, Datalight ROM-DOS,¹¹ ReactOS,¹² GNU,¹³ AROS¹⁴ and in the DCL command-line interface used on DEC VMS, RT-11 and RSX-11. It is also supplied with OS/8 as a CUSP (Commonly-Used System Program).

The dir command is supported by Tim Paterson's SCP 86-DOS.¹⁵ On MS-DOS, the command is available in versions 1 and later.¹⁶ It is also available in the open source MS-DOS emulator DOSBox. MS-DOS prompts "Abort, Retry, Fail?" after being commanded to list a directory with no diskette in the drive.

The numerical computing environments MATLAB and GNU Octave include a dir function with similar functionality.¹⁷¹⁸

Examples

DOS, Windows, ReactOS

List all files and directories in the current working directory.

C:\Users>dir

List any text files and batch files (filename extension ".txt" or ".bat").

C:\Users>dir *.txt *.bat

Recursively list all files and directories in the specified directory and any subdirectories, in wide format, pausing after each screen of output. The directory name is enclosed in double-quotes, to prevent it from being interpreted is as two separate command-line options because it contains a whitespace character.

C:\Users>dir /s /w /p "C:\Users\johndoe\My Documents"

List any NTFS junction points:

C:\Users>dir /ash Volume in drive C is OS. Volume Serial Number is xxxx-xxxx Directory of C:\Users 12/07/2019 02:30 AM <SYMLINKD> All Users [C:\ProgramData] 12/07/2019 02:30 AM <JUNCTION> Default User [C:\Users\Default] 12/07/2019 02:12 AM 174 desktop.ini 1 File(s) 174 bytes 2 Dir(s) 332,659,789,824 bytes free

Unix

Traditionally, Unix and Unix-like systems use the ls command for the needs that dir satisfies. But, the GNU operating system, has a dir command that "is equivalent to ls -C -b; that is, by default files are listed in columns, sorted vertically, and special characters are represented by backslash escape sequences".¹⁹ Actually, for compatibility reasons, ls produces device-dependent output. The dir command, on the other hand, produces device-independent output.

See also

• Directory (OpenVMS command)
• List of DOS commands
• tree

Further reading

• Wolverton, Van (1990). MS-DOS Commands: Microsoft Quick Reference, 4th Revised edition. Microsoft Press. ISBN 978-1556152894.
• Kathy Ivens; Brian Proffit (1993). OS/2 Inside & Out. Osborne McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0078818714.
• Frisch, Æleen (2001). Windows 2000 Commands Pocket Reference. O'Reilly. ISBN 978-0-596-00148-3.

External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Guide to Windows Commands

• dir | Microsoft Docs
• Open source DIR implementation that comes with MS-DOS v2.0
• Dir command syntax and examples

References

1. Rügheimer, Hannes; Spanik, Christian (October 22, 1988). AmigaDOS quick reference. Grand Rapids, Mi : Abacus. ISBN 9781557550491 – via Internet Archive. 9781557550491 ↩

2. "Operating manual" (PDF). cpm.z80.de. Retrieved 2019-10-22. http://www.cpm.z80.de/manuals/cpm22-m.pdf ↩

3. Digital Research (1981-09-25). MP/M-86 Operating System - User's Guide (PDF) (1 ed.). Pacific Grove, CA, USA: Digital Research. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-01-04. Retrieved 2017-01-04. /wiki/Digital_Research ↩

4. ISIS II Users Guide http://bitsavers.org/pdf/intel/ISIS_II/9800306-06_ISIS-II_Users_Guide_May81.pdf ↩

5. iRMX 86 INTRODUCTION AND OPERATOR'S REFERENCE MANUAL For Release 6 https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_inteliRMX1_19819263 ↩

6. CDOS USER'S MANUAL http://www.hartetechnologies.com/manuals/Cromemco/CDOSv1.PDF ↩

7. "Introduction to Tripos" (PDF). Retrieved 2019-10-22. https://www.pagetable.com/docs/amigados_tripos/tripos_manuals.pdf ↩

8. [1][dead link] https://archive.org/details/4690OSV6r2UsersGuide/page/n169 ↩

9. "JaTomes Help - OS/2 Commands". www.jatomes.com. Archived from the original on 2019-04-14. Retrieved 2019-07-20. https://web.archive.org/web/20190414130029/http://www.jatomes.com/Help/Os2Cmd.php#DIR ↩

10. "MS-DOS and Windows command line dir command". www.computerhope.com. https://www.computerhope.com/dirhlp.htm ↩

11. "Datalight ROM-DOS User's Guide" (PDF). www.datalight.com. https://www.datalight.com/assets/files/ROM-DOS_Users_Guide.pdf ↩

12. "GitHub - reactos/reactos: A free Windows-compatible Operating System". October 22, 2019 – via GitHub. https://github.com/reactos/reactos ↩

13. "GNU Coreutils Manual". Free Software Foundation. https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/dir ↩

14. "AROS Research Operating System". aros.sourceforge.net. http://aros.sourceforge.net/documentation/users/shell/index.php ↩

15. 86-DOS - Disk Operating System for the 8086 - User's Manual (PDF). Version 0.3 (Preliminary ed.). Seattle, Washington, USA: Seattle Computer Products, Inc. 1980. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-07-14. Retrieved 2019-07-14. (59 pages) https://web.archive.org/web/20190714004434/http://www.patersontech.com/dos/docs/86_Dos_usr_03.pdf ↩

16. Wolverton, Van (2003). Running MS-DOS Version 6.22 (20th Anniversary Edition), 6th Revised edition. Microsoft Press. ISBN 0-7356-1812-7. 0-7356-1812-7 ↩

17. "List folder contents - MATLAB dir". www.mathworks.com. https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/dir.html ↩

18. "Function Reference: dir". octave.sourceforge.io. https://octave.sourceforge.io/octave/function/dir.html ↩

19. dir invocation (GNU coreutils) at www.gnu.org //www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/dir-invocation.html ↩