DOS Command Line Editors
                    Copyright 1984-1994 Nelson Ford, PsL

DOS Command Editors are what DOSKEY is. DOSKEY comes with DOS and you
can read about it in your DOS manual. DOSKEY was added to DOS long after 
these other utilities were written, and in our opinion, CED and others 
are much more powerful, more flexible, and easier to use than DOSKEY. 

DOS Command Editors are similar in some ways to key macro programs and 
"shorthand" utilities which allow you to type in just part of a word and 
the computer fills in the rest. For more on these utilities, see the 
Keyboard section. 

DOS Command Editors may also have some or all of the following features: 

     -command scrolling:  you can use the up and down cursor keys to 
      scroll back through previously entered commands in DOS.  If you are
      doing repetitive tasks while in DOS, this keeps you from having to
      retype the same lines over and over. 

     -use of the cursor keys: now if you make a mistake while typing in DOS, 
      you can use the cursor keys to go back and correct it instead of
      having to erase what you have already typed.  This feature combines
      nicely with command scrolling.  For example, if you want copy the
      file DATABASE from drive C:  to drive A:  and then to drive B:, at
      the C> prompt you would enter COPY DATABASE A:  and when it was done,
      press the up cursor. This redisplays the last command and leaves the
      cursor at the end of the command so that all you have to do is press
      the left cursor key twice change the A to B and press Enter. 

     -recall of program parameters: after you have run a program once, the 
      next time you call the program, the DCE will insert the same
      parameters for you. For example, if you enter 
          link myprog+module1+module2+module3+module4+module5+module6
      then the next time you run LINK, all the rest of the line will be
      entered for you automatically. 

     -synonyms:  have you ever typed in DUR or DRI instead of DIR? Now you 
      can tell your DCE to do a DIR when it sees one of these other common
      misspellings. You can also define synonyms which execute a series of
      commands, just like in a batch file. In fact... 

     -MANY OF YOUR BATCH FILES ARE NO LONGER NEEDED. On a hard disk, a small 
      batch file to do the job that a typical synonym can do would take up
      the drive's minimum allocation of space, which may be as much as
      8,000 characters. If you have many of these little batch files, they
      can use up and enormous amount of disk space.  Now you can make them
      into synonyms and free up that disk space. 

     -SYNONYMS RESIDE IN MEMORY and execute at RAM speed instead of disk speed.  
      If you have a floppy based system, you no longer have to switch
      disks to use a batch file, and the speed increase is remarkable.