MS DOS Command: SHELL

Reference from Microsoft MS-DOS cmd help

Description

Specifies the name and location of the command interpreter you want MS-DOS to use. You can use this command only in your CONFIG.SYS file.

If you want to use your own command interpreter (instead of COMMAND.COM), you can specify its name by adding a SHELL command to your CONFIG.SYS file.

Syntax

SHELL=[[drive:]path]filename [parameters]

Parameters

[[drive:]path]filename	Specifies the location and name of the command interpreter you want MS-DOS to use.
[[drive:]parameters	Specifies any command-line parameters or switches that can be used with the specified command interpreter.

Related Command

For information about COMMAND.COM switches, see the COMMAND command.

Remarks

Default setting

The default command interpreter for MS-DOS is COMMAND.COM. If you do not use a SHELL command in your CONFIG.SYS file, MS-DOS searches for COMMAND.COM in the root directory of your startup drive. You need to use the SHELL command if you want to specify a COMMAND.COM file that is not in the root directory or if you do not want to use the default environment size for COMMAND.COM. For information about COMMAND.COM switches, see the COMMAND command.

Using switches with a command interpreter

The SHELL command itself does not accept any switches, but if the command interpreter does, you can include them on the SHELL command line.

Examples

Suppose the file NEWSHELL.COM is in a directory named BIN on your startup drive, and suppose you want to use NEWSHELL.COM as your command interpreter. To do this, add the following command to your CONFIG.SYS file:

shell=\bin\newshell.com

Suppose you add the line SHELL=NEWCMDP.COM to your CONFIG.SYS file, and suppose the NEWCMDP.COM command interpreter accepts the switches /C, /P, and /E. You can now use any of these switches on the SHELL command line. Thus, the following command would be valid:

shell=newcmdp.com /c /p /e

The SHELL command is the preferred method of using COMMAND to increase the size of the environment. To increase the environment size to 512 bytes, add the following command to your CONFIG.SYS file:

shell=command.com /e:512 /p

To start an MS-DOS command interpreter located in the directory OLD on drive C, add the following command to your CONFIG.SYS file:

shell=c:\old\command.com c:\old /e:256 /p

For information about COMMAND.COM switches, see the COMMAND command.