Bad command or file name
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"Bad command or file name" is a common error message in Microsoft's MS-DOS and some other operating systems.[1] It is occasionally used as an example of a computer message that is perfectly accurate yet confusing to the average user[citation needed].
COMMAND.COM produced the message "Bad command or file name" when the command could not be interpreted. For MS-DOS, a command was only interpreted successfully if the first word of a command was the name of an internal command, external command, executable file or batch file.[2] Therefore, the error message provided an accurate (albeit terse) description of the problem that there was no such command or file, but easily confused novices and was only easily understood by more knowledgeable users. Though the source of the error was often a mistyped command, the second part of the error often gave novice users the impression that the specified files were damaged or had illegal filenames when files were specified as part of the command. Later, the wording of the error message displayed to the user was changed to be less ambiguous, as both OS/2[citation needed] and the Windows NT family output foo is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file., The syntax of the command is incorrect, and The system cannot find the path specified for the respective situations.[3]
Some early Unix shells produced the equally cryptic "foo: no such file or directory" for the same reasons. To avoid confusion, most[weasel words] modern shells produce separate error messages similar to foo: command not found and foofile: No such file or directory for unrecognized commands and absent files, respectively.[4][5]
See also
References
- ^ Jim Cooper, (2002). Using MS-DOS 6.22. Que Publishing. ISBN 9780789725738
- ^ "Instructrions:". MSDN. Microsoft. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
- ^ "From Command Prompt: "The Name Specified Is Not Recognized..." :". Microsoft. Microsoft. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
- ^ "GNU Project Archives:". GNU. GNU. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
- ^ "TCSH: MostRecentRelease:". Ken Greer, Paul Placeway, Christos Zoulas, et al. tcsh.org. Retrieved March 8, 2015.