Command input syntax 1616/OS scansthelinethatyoutype,responding tovariouscharactersasappropriate. For example, if you use one of the line editor control codes (see Section 2), then the line is edited. However, when you press the key, the operating system then tries to carry out the commands entered. Spaces and tabs separate the commands and all the arguments from each other. This means that you can not leave spaces in filenames, or it will appear that there is more than one word. 1616/OS will assume that the first word in the line is a command, and attempt to execute that command, as detailed later.
For example, type the inbuilt command Enter ascii and you will get an ASCII table on the display. Examples of commands Type the inbuilt command date and the date and time (probably incorrect, see the inbuilt setdate to fix them) will be displayed. To obtain a list of available inbuilt commands, type help If a command takes arguments, these come after it, separated by spaces. Try help setdate The help command, with setdate as an argument, now tells you that the inbuilt setdate command requires a series of values as its arguments. Change the date and time by using setdate .92 .12 .21 .14 .30 9 but substitute the correct year, month, day, hour, minute and second.
Note that the year takes only two digits, and that the hour is in 24 hour clock notation (.14 is 2 p.m.) Notice also that where a number exceeds 9, I placed a . in front, to indicate I intended a decimal number (even computer people tend not to express dates in hexadecimal!) Each command ‘knows’ what sort of arguments it needs, and will give an error message if you provide the wrong type of argument. Now type time ascii The inbuilt command time simply measures how long something takes to happen (experienced users may note this is the way the equivalent U NIX command works - MS-DOS gives you the less useful time of day instead).
As with the help command, its arguments happened to be yet another command. Page 22 User Tutorial Manual Command Handling