More detailed error messages than the blanket ' Bad command or file name' (in the case of malformed commands) of COMMAND.COM.On Windows, cmd.exe is mostly compatible with COMMAND.COM but provides the following extensions over it: When using this separator in the Windows cmd.exe, each command must complete successfully for the following commands to execute. Multiple commands can be processed in a single command line using the command separator &. ( COMMAND.COM uses temporary files, and runs the two sides serially, one after the other.) As a result, it is possible to redirect the standard error stream. For example, on OS/2 and Windows, it can use real pipes in command pipelines, allowing both sides of the pipeline to run concurrently. cmd.exe may take advantage of features available to native programs of its own platform. On Windows, this interface is implemented through the Win32 console.

Operation Ĭmd.exe interacts with the user through a command-line interface. The ReactOS implementation of cmd.exe is derived from FreeCOM, the FreeDOS command line interpreter. Windows CE 2.11 was the first embedded Windows release to support a console and a Windows CE version of cmd.exe. The initial version of cmd.exe for Windows NT was developed by Therese Stowell. cmd.exe is the counterpart of COMMAND.COM in DOS and Windows 9x systems, and analogous to the Unix shells used on Unix-like systems. Its implementations differ between operating systems, but the behavior and basic set of commands are consistent.

NET 4.2, Windows CE 5.0 and Windows Embedded CE 6.0 it is referred to as the Command Processor Shell.

IA-32, x86-64, ARM (and historically DEC Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC, and Itanium)Ĭommand Prompt, also known as cmd.exe or cmd, is the default command-line interpreter for the OS/2, eComStation, ArcaOS, Microsoft Windows ( Windows NT family and Windows CE family), and ReactOS operating systems.

Windows command line