资料来源 : pyDict
美国微软公司的磁盘操作系统
资料来源 : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing
MS-DOS
/M S doss/ Microsoft Disk Operating System
(Or "{DOS}", "{MS-DOG}", "{mess-dos}") {Microsoft
Corporation}'s {clone} of {CP/M} for the {8088} crufted
together in 6 weeks by hacker Tim Paterson, who is said to
have regretted it ever since.
MS-DOS is a single user {operating system} that runs one
program at a time and is limited to working with one megabyte
of memory, 640 kilobytes of which is usable for the
{application program}. Special add-on {EMS} memory boards
allow EMS-compliant software to exceed the 1 MB limit.
Add-ons to DOS, such as {Microsoft Windows} and {DESQview},
take advantage of EMS and allow the user to have multiple
applications loaded at once and switch between them.
Numerous features, including vaguely {Unix}-like but rather
broken support for subdirectories, {I/O redirection}, and
{pipelines}, were hacked into MS-DOS 2.0 and subsequent
versions; as a result, there are two or more incompatible
versions of many system calls, and MS-DOS programmers can
never agree on basic things like what character to use as an
option switch or whether to be case-sensitive. The resulting
mess is now the highest-unit-volume {operating system} in
history. It is used on many {Intel} 16 and 32 bit
{microprocessors} and {IBM PC} compatibles.
Many of the original DOS functions were calls to {BASIC} (in
{ROM} on the original {IBM PC}), e.g. Format and Mode. People
with non-IBM PCs had to buy {MS-Basic} (later called
{GWBasic}). Most version of DOS came with some version of
BASIC.
Also know as PC-DOS or simply as DOS, which annoys people
familiar with other similarly abbreviated operating systems
(the name goes back to the mid-1960s, when it was attached to
{IBM}'s first disk operating system for the {IBM 360}). Some
people like to pronounce DOS like "dose" or to compare it to a
dose of brain-damaging drugs (a slogan button in wide
circulation among hackers exhorts: "MS-DOS: Just say No!").
[{Jargon File}]
(1998-07-19)