"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 (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 .
Famous quotes containing the words bad, command and/or file:
“There are no good or bad habits. All habits are, by definition, bad.”
—José Bergamín (18951983)
“Diamonds may have been a girls best friend in an era when a womans only hope of having a high family income was to marry a man who was well-off, but today, marketable skills that will enable a woman to command a good income over her lifetime are a better investment.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled Science Fiction ... and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)