I’ve been hearing this a lot lately (you know who you are), so rather than pull all of you aside privately and give this lecture, I thought I’d do it once, publicly. You’re not running a DOS prompt.

When you click on that shortcut that says, “Command Prompt” in Windows XP, or you run cmd.exe from the “Run” box, you’re not starting a “DOS prompt.” What you are starting is a command line interface, or just “command line” if you prefer. If you haven’t actually run COMMAND.COM, it’s not DOS!.

So, please, next time don’t tell me to run your favorite utility “at the DOS prompt.” Let DOS rest in peace.

The first person to call Powershell a DOS prompt will get the lecture in real time.