Compute's AmigaOOS Reference Guide Fourth Edition Sheldon Leemon COMPUTE Books Greensboro, North Carolina Editor: Stephen Levy Cover design: Lee Noel Copyright 1986, 1987, 1989, 1992, COMPUTE Publications International Ltd. All rights reserved. Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the United States Copyright Act without the permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Printed in the Unit~d States of America 10987654321 0-87455-268-0 The author and publisher have made every effort in the preparation of this book to insure the accuracy of the information. However, the information in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author nor COMPUTE Publications International Ltd. will be liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly, indirectly, incidentally, or consequentially by the information in this book. The opinions expressed in this book are solely those of the author and are not necessarily those of COMPUTE Publications International Ltd. COMPUTE Books, '324 West Wendover Ave., Suite 200, Greensboro, NC 27408, is a General Media company and is not associated with any manufacturer of personal computers. Amiga is a trademark of Commodore-Amiga, Inc. Contents Foreword ......................................................................................................................... vii Introduction to AmigaDOS ............................................................................................. 1 The eLI Environment ................................................................................... ~ ................. 8 The CLI Console .......................................................................................................... 9 Running a Program. from a CLI ................ :............................................................... 20 Starting Additional CLI Processes ............................................................................ 22 The Filing System ........................................................................................................... 28 Devices ...................." ........................................................................................................ 52 Disk Drives .................................•............................................................................. 52 The RAM: Disk ......................................................................................................... 57 Communications Ports .............................................................................................. 59 Console and Others ................................................................................................... 60 Logical Devices ..................................................... :................................................... 66 MOUNTable Device Drivers and Handlers .............................................................. 76 Redirection of Input and Output ............................................................................... 83 Command Sequence Flles .............................................................................................. 86 ED, the System Screen Editor ..................................................................................... 114 Immediate Mode ..................................................................................................... 115 Extended Mode Commands .................................................................................... 118 ED Command Summary ......................................................................................... 134 EDIT, the Line Editor .................................................................................................. 138 EDIT Command Reference ...................................................................................... 161 AmigaDOS Command Reference ............................................................................... 164 AmigaDOS Filename Conventions ......................................................................... 164 Pattern Matching (Wildcards) ................................................................................. 166. Pattern Matching Summary .................................................................................... 169 AmigaDOS Templates ............................................................................................. 170 Redirected Output ................................................................................................... 172 Fonnat of the AmigaDOS Command Reference .................................................... 173 ADDBUfFER~ ....................................................................................................... 173 ADDDATATypES ................................................................................................. 175 I ALIAS ..................................................................................................................... 176 ASK ......................................................................................................................... 177 ASSIGN .................................................................................................................. 178 AVAIL ..................................................................................................................... 184 BINDDRIVERS ...................................................................................................... 185 BREAK ................................................................................................................... 186 CD ........................................................................................................................... 187 CHANGETASKPRI ................................................................................................ 189 CONCLIP ............................ :................................................................................... 190 COpy ...................................................................................................................... 191 CPU ......................................................................................................................... 196 DATE ...................................................................................................................... 198 DELETE .................................................................................................................. 201 DIR .......................................................................................................................... 202 DISKCHANGE ....................................................................................................... 204 DISKCOPY ............................................................................................................. 205 DISKDOCTOR ....................................................................................................... 208 ECHO ...................................................................................................................... 209 ED ............................................................................................................................ 212 EDIT ........................................................................................................................ 213 ELSE ....................................................................................................................... 215 ENDCLI ............................................................................................................... :.. 216 ENDIF ..................................................................................................................... 217 ENDSHELL ............................................................................................................ 217 ENDSKIP ................................................................................................................ 218 EVAL ........ : ............................................................................................................. 218 EXECUTE ............................................................................................................... 222 FAILAT ................................................................................................................... 224 FAULT .................................................................................................................... 225 FF ............................................................................................................................ 227 FILENOTE .............................................................................................................. 228 FORMAT ................................................................................................................ 229 GET ......................................................................................................................... 231 GETENV ................................................................................................................. 232 IF ............................................................................................................................. 233 INFO ........................................................................................................................ 237 INSTALL ...............................................................................................................