Is it possible to run MS DOS commands in Mac OSX?

Question

I'm new to the Mac platform. May I know if there is any possibility to run MS DOS commands in Mac?

Is there any package or script available to do this?

Answer 1

Natively? No.

Mac OS X is essentially based on Unix and therefore has nothing or little in common with MS DOS. You therefore can't just run a batch file or typical DOS commands on Mac OS X.

OS X uses the famous bash as its default shell and – with Terminal.app – offers a typical Terminal emulator similar to those found in all graphical Linux/Unix distributions. If you're new to Mac, and you need to write shell scripts to achieve a certain functionality, you might want to learn bash, e.g. by reading the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide.

Apple also has their own scripting language called AppleScript, which also allows user interface scripting in a very straightforward "natural" way.

If you need DOS-like functionality, there are two options:

• You can always virtualize Windows using free and open source VirtualBox, but it will be a bit sandboxed, and you can't just have a "DOS" cmd in your system.

• Of course, there are DOS emulators, like for example Boxer, which emulates DOS games. It is based on DOSBox, a DOS emulator:

  

  DOSBox emulates an Intel x86 PC, complete with sound, graphics, mouse, joystick, modem, etc., necessary for running many old MS-DOS games that simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux and FreeBSD.

  However, it is not restricted to running only games. In theory, any MS-DOS or PC-DOS (referred to commonly as "DOS") application should run in DOSBox, but the emphasis has been on getting DOS games to run smoothly, which means that communication, networking and printer support are still in early development.

  DOSBox also comes with its own DOS-like command prompt. It is still quite rudimentary and lacks many of the features found in MS-DOS, but it is sufficient for installing and running most DOS games.

  You can watch a YouTube video about DOSBox on OS X.