Bad Command or File Name

"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 is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Some early Unix shells produced the equally-cryptic : no such file or directory (because they searched for a file matching the command name and this is the strerror when a file of a given name is not found). Most modern shells produce : Command not found.

Famous quotes containing the words bad, command and/or file:

    “In the United States the whites speak well of the Blacks but think bad about them, whereas the Blacks talk bad and think bad about the whites. Whites fear Blacks, because they have a bad conscience, and Blacks hate whites because they need not have a bad conscience.”
    —Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)

    “How did you get in the Navy? How did you get on our side? Ah, you ignorant, arrogant, ambitious—keeping sixty two men in prison cause you got a palm tree for the work they did. I don’t know which I hate worse, you or that malignant growth that stands outside your door. How did you ever get command of a ship? I realize in wartime they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel. But where’d they ever scrape you up?”
    —Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)

    “A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)