"Bad command or file name" is a common error message in Microsoft's MS-DOS and some other operating systems.
In command.com, the message Bad command or file name is produced if the user mistypes the first word of a command line. This first word must be either the name of a built-in "command", or of an executable file or batch file. Therefore the error was printing what, to the programmer, was an accurate description of the problem: there was no such command and there was no such file. Novices, in general, had trouble understanding the message, so later operating systems changed it; for instance, OS/2 and the Windows NT (and newer) family use
Some early Unix shells produced the equally-cryptic
Famous quotes containing the words bad, command and/or file:
“There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about colored women, and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I’m for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again.”
—Sojourner Truth (1797–1883)
“Children from humble families must be taught how to command just as other children must be taught how to obey.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Probably nothing in the experience of the rank and file of workers causes more bitterness and envy than the realization which comes sooner or later to many of them that they are “stuck” and can go no further.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)