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DOS on Dope (2010)

181 points| _fnqu | 4 years ago |secretgeek.net

67 comments

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[+] jimohalloranau|4 years ago|reply
Am I the only one struggling with the "Controllers" folder not being an 8.3 filename, and therefore couldn't actually exist on MSDOS?

To use "Controllers" you'd need a file system with support for Long File Names (LFN) which for most people didn't happen until Windows 95 (maybe WInNT 3 had it too, I dunno, never used NT 3.x).

So "WinDOS on Dope"?

Still pretty cool nonetheless.

[+] LeonB|4 years ago|reply
Valid point.

If I just changed any mention of "Controllers" to "CONTRO~1" (both in the tutorial and in the code) -- it would work just fine. Maybe after 10+ years it's time for a patch. But not today.

[+] pavlov|4 years ago|reply
NT 3.x already had the NTFS file system.

But yes, it’s not DOS-credible if the paths aren’t like C:\DOPE\CTRL …

[+] skissane|4 years ago|reply
I think the author is using "DOS" to mean "Windows Command Prompt" (cmd.exe and Win32 Console subsystem)

Incorrect terminology, but an error I've heard people make again and again and again, pretty much constantly ever since Windows XP came out. In Windows 3.x/9x/Me, the command prompt actually was MS-DOS. In NT/XP/Vista/7/8/10/11, it is not DOS any more, unless you actually run command.com under NTVDM (only possible in 32-bit Windows, support for which is gone in Windows 11)

[+] rascul|4 years ago|reply
From what I recall, Windows 95 and 98 shipped with MS-DOS 7.0, which was not released separately but was easily extracted and could run on its own. It included support for long file names.
[+] Semiapies|4 years ago|reply
This a war crime of a software project, and I love it.
[+] alexshendi|4 years ago|reply
cmd.exe is a Windows (NT) console application and has nothing whatsoever to do with DOS.

The verdict: Sentenced to using PC-DOS 1.0 for 6 month' straight. No probation.

[+] LeonB|4 years ago|reply
"cmd.exe on coke" didn't test well with our target demographic. (author here)
[+] Jaruzel|4 years ago|reply
Every time I see 'DOS' tutorials like this, I realise that I'm in a minority that uses .cmd as [Windows]DOS batch file extensions and not .bat

The reason for this (for those that don't know) is that when 32-bit Windows arrived, the DOS 32-bit shell (cmd.exe) was introduced alongside the traditional command.com and with it added a bunch of new shell commands and options. To call cmd.exe instead of command.com you would use .cmd as your batch file extension instead of .bat.

This was done to ensure ongoing 100% compatibility of legacy .bat files with command.com

Even after Microsoft killed off command.com and remapped .bat to cmd.exe I still used .cmd as the file extension and still do to this day.

Seeing people use .bat makes me realise that a lot of people never went through this transition and are probably unaware of the .cmd extension.

[+] quietbritishjim|4 years ago|reply
Odd, I lived through the same period, and don't recall a situation where .cmd vs .bat ever made a difference to the interpreter.

On DOS-based Windows (i.e. up to 3.1, and then 95/98/ME) only COMMAND.COM was available, so certainly that was always used as the interpreter.

The native Windows 32-bit cmd.exe was introduced on NT-based Windows (i.e. 3.1/3.5(1)/4/2000, then XP and all following mainstream Windows). A virtualised form of DOS was available on the NT line so in principle you could also run your batch files through the old COMMAND.COM. This is where I'm least confident, but I thought that the extension wouldn't make that choice though - it would use the 32-bit cmd.exe even if the extension was .bat, unless you explicitly started a DOS instance and ran it through that. After all, one of the design goals of cmd.exe was to be a drop-in replacement for the old DOS interpreter.

[+] LeonB|4 years ago|reply
Author here.

In dos on dope, .bat files are used for actions that handle http GET, and .cmd files are used for actions that handle http POST.

Btw I did live through that transition. (?)

[+] porbelm|4 years ago|reply
Yeah, I remember this, having used DOS since 5, but never used advanced enough stuff to justify forcing cmd.exe
[+] unixhero|4 years ago|reply
There is also .ba1 which I have no idea what is.
[+] porbelm|4 years ago|reply
"So far I haven't run into any performance problems. Whenever I've opened up a DoD website to several users, my hard drive tends to get wiped long before I discover performance issues."

lol :)

[+] lightlyused|4 years ago|reply
"So far I haven't run into any performance problems. Whenever I've opened up a DoD website to several users, my hard drive tends to get wiped long before I discover performance issues."

Had to laugh at this in the FAQ. My first thought was of the Tubes "White Punks on Dope." I think that is the performance you are seeking.

[+] pabs3|4 years ago|reply
It is full of choice quotes. More:

> In DoD we embrace the NoSQL movement and jump straight to the data-store of the future: a CSV file.

> If you can't trust public visitors from the internet, who can you trust? Executing user input as commands inside the operating system is the most direct way to get things done, and that's what matters most.

[+] themodelplumber|4 years ago|reply
> copy con About.bat

Holy smokes, what a flashback...

> @echo off

...wow do batch files still use this stuff seriously? I remember learning that trick from the PC Mag MS-DOS Bible in the early 90s...that one alone made me feel like I had learned to write executables rather than simple command lists. Funny to see this project, really cool too.

[+] PufPufPuf|4 years ago|reply
They do, but nobody uses batchfiles nowadays. PowerShell is the thing.
[+] aa-jv|4 years ago|reply
Technology doesn't get old. Its users do.
[+] qwerty456127|4 years ago|reply
> That editor with the blue background must be the new TextMate-killer for the PC :)

It could and should be. Subjectively, according to my taste, all modern text-mode editors are either ugly or unintuitive or both. MS Edit (edit.com) was both nice-looking and intuitive but lacked modern features like extensibility, code completion, regex search, multi-cursor, UTF-8 support etc. I really wish there were modern MS Edit clones (for whatever OSes the developers would be interested in, I'm interested in many) implementing modern features I've mentioned.

[+] mikewarot|4 years ago|reply
Ask yourself, what kind of operating system would it take to make this a safe thing to do?

Build that OS, we really need it.

A perfect, leak proof sandbox would be a very valuable thing to have available.

[+] smackeyacky|4 years ago|reply
In theory, on a modern machine you could almost spin up a brand new instance of this for each request. When it's done, delete it.

Pretty secure. Horrible, but secure.

[+] locusofself|4 years ago|reply
This reminded me of "Bash on balls" , a joke web "framework" written in bash. I think it might have pre-dated this a bit?

https://github.com/jneen/balls/tree/master/lib

[+] LeonB|4 years ago|reply
Cheers I haven’t seen or heard of “bash on balls” before.

From what I can tell Dos on Dope (Sept 2010) predates Bash on Balls (Jan 2011).

[+] rizaxe|4 years ago|reply
Does it support Netscape Navigator or Mosiac? This could be perfect for when I go back to the early 90s
[+] glassprongs|4 years ago|reply
That is some nice batch scripting kung-fu.
[+] unixhero|4 years ago|reply
Anyone who knows the relationship between .BAT files and REXX scripts?
[+] hexagonsun|4 years ago|reply
yo that haskel on a horse link is poisoned...
[+] LeonB|4 years ago|reply
Thank you! fixed in the blog post and the github repo's index.md.
[+] annoyingnoob|4 years ago|reply
No edlin?
[+] LeonB|4 years ago|reply
I found that (even back in 2010!) “edlin” wasn’t available on my laptop. And since I was coding this on the bus (without internet) I couldn’t download/find some legacy way of running edlin.

I opted to gave an example of “copy con” and ^Z instead.

[+] gfykvfyxgc|4 years ago|reply
Off topic but my favorite editor of all time was the DOS edit.

It was simple and straightforward with keys that made sense.

[+] digisign|4 years ago|reply
Micro is just about is good, with a CUA interface, though is lacking the menu and dialogs.

Also, freedos has a similar editor that has a few new features.

[+] crate_barre|4 years ago|reply
I sorta don’t get it. Is there such a thing a corny meta humor? There’s corny regular humor. Can meta humor be corny too? Is this meta corny? There’s gotta be corny people at every layer, right?

This is kinda corny. It’s still edgy to make fun of model view controller?

[+] LeonB|4 years ago|reply
I don't know if it was ever "edgy" but I wrote it in 2010. And it wasn't so much a parody of MVC, but very specifically of Ruby on Rails.