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In computing, start is a command of the IBM OS/2, [1] Microsoft Windows [2] and ReactOS [3] command-line interpreter cmd.exe [4] (and some versions of COMMAND.COM) to start programs or batch files or to open files or directories using the default program. start is not available as a standalone program.
cmd.exe in Windows NT 2000, 4DOS, 4OS2, 4NT, and a number of third-party solutions allow direct entry of environment variables from the command prompt. From at least Windows 2000, the set command allows for the evaluation of strings into variables, thus providing inter alia a means of performing integer arithmetic.
The initial version of cmd.exe for Windows NT was developed by Therese Stowell. [6] Windows CE 2.11 was the first embedded Windows release to support a console and a Windows CE version of cmd.exe. [7] The ReactOS implementation of cmd.exe is derived from FreeCOM, the FreeDOS command line interpreter. [2]
An MS-DOS command line, illustrating parsing into command and arguments. A command-line argument or parameter is an item of information provided to a program when it is started. [20] A program can have many command-line arguments that identify sources or destinations of information, or that alter the operation of the program.
The COMMAND.COM file is copied to the ram disk during boot and the COMSPEC environment variable is set to the new location on the ram disk. This way the boot disk can be removed without the need to reinsert it after a big application has been stopped. The command line interpreter will be reloaded from the ram disk instead of the boot disk.
COMMAND.COM is the default command-line interpreter for MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me.In the case of DOS, it is the default user interface as well. [2] It has an additional role as the usual first program run after boot (init process), hence being responsible for setting up the system by running the AUTOEXEC.BAT configuration file, and being the ancestor of all processes.
The environment of an EXE program run by DOS is found in its Program Segment Prefix.. EXE files normally have separate segments for the code, data, and stack. Program execution begins at address 0 of the code segment, and the stack pointer register is set to whatever value is contained in the header information (thus if the header specifies a 512 byte stack, the stack pointer is set to 200h).
The cmd.exe command processor of Windows NT-based systems supports basic completion. It is possible to use a separate key-binding for matching directory names only. cmd.exe /F:ON enables file and directory name completion characters (^F and ^D by default).