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Short for Microsoft Disk operating system, MS-DOS is a non-graphical command line operating system derived from 86-DOS that was created for IBM compatible computers. MS-DOS originally written by Tim Paterson and introduced by Microsoft in August 1981 and was last updated in 1994 when MS-DOS 6.22 was released. Today, MS-DOS is no longer used; however, the command shell, more commonly known as the Windows command line is still used by many users. In the picture to the right, is an example of what a MS-DOS window more appropriately referred to as the Windows command line looks like under Microsoft Windows.

Microsoft DOS append command

Quick links

About append
Availability
Syntax
Examples

About append

Similar to the PATH MS-DOS command, the append command enables a user to open files in the specified directory as if they were in the current directory.

Tip: See our append definition if you're looking for information about how to append text or a file into a file.

Availability

Append.exe is an external command available in the below versions of Microsoft operating systems.

MS-DOS 3.2x - 6.2x
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows NT
Windows 2000
Windows XP

Syntax

APPEND Drive: \Path /X /E Path:on or off

Drive:	The drive letter to be searched.
\Path	The path to be searched.
/X :on or :off	Extends the DOS search path for specified files when executing programs. Processes SEARCH FIRST, FIND FIRST and EXEC functions. The :ON and :OFF are new to version MS-DOS 5.0,
/Path :on or :off	If path is already included for a program file, :on tells program to also search in appended directories. Default= :on. Note: The default value of = :on was added in MS-DOS 5.0 and above
/E	Causes the appended path to be stored in the DOS environment and searched for there.
;	Use ";" to separate multiple Drive:\path statements on one line.

Examples

Note: You can not use any paths on the same command line as /X and /E. The :ON and :OFF options are only available in MS-DOS 5.0 and later. Do not append within a Windows environment. The append command can be used on a network. Invalid drive specifications will not be detected until DOS attempts to use the search path to find specified files.

append

Using append alone will display the current search path.

append c:\docs;c:\letters;c:\files

Sets the computer to look for files in the docs, letters and files directory, therefore when typing a command such as "edit myfile.txt" if the file is not present in the current directory the computer would also look for the file in docs, letters and files directory.