Dissecting DOS: A Code-Level Look at the DOS Operating System - Softcover

Podanoffsky, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 020162687X ISBN 13: 9780201626872

Publisher: Addison Wesley, 1994

Synopsis

Dissecting DOS explores the way DOS is structured and the way it works from a programmer's perspective. It illustrates DOS's overall architecture and command structure and then reveals the code-level details of vital DOS actions. The book includes coverage of the operating system RxDOS and MS-DOS clone created to emulate and parallel the commercial system. The actual MS-DOS source code is both secret and copyright protected. However, the inner workings of MS-DOS are discovered by studying the source code of the RxDOS clone included on the disk.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Podanoffsky has been programming professionally for twenty years and currently develops object interfaces and database architectures for a major software publisher. He has written several articles for leading computer programming periodicals.

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From the Back Cover

The source code of MS-DOS is both secret and copyright-protected, so, as a Windows and DOS programmer, you can't study the code and figure out how this operating system works. If you could study the code, you would be able to optimize your Windows and DOS programs.

Now there's Dissecting DOS, the first book to take programmers on a fantastic voyage through the code-level guts of MS-DOS. The book features the complete source code for the DOS work-alike operating system RxDOS, which emulates and parallels the commercial system. Dissecting DOS explains the architecture, command structure, and operation of DOS and uses the work-alike RxDOS to illustrate the source code controlling vital DOS actions, such as processing function calls, file redirection, disk compression, memory management and device drivers.

Dissecting DOS reveals the details of DOS:

• file processing
• memory allocation
• process management
• COMMAND.COM functions
• device redirection
• low level file allocation table (FAT) architecture.

The book features extensive innovative techniques and technical insights for Windows and DOS programmers, such as how your program can usurp the MS-DOS COMMAND.COM component and other functions to achieve optimum customization. The accompanying disk includes the entire source code for the MS-DOS workalike RxDOS. Readers can use actual RxDOS source code in their own programs to emulate DOS functions and features. Dissecting DOS reveals the inner secrets of MS-DOS that every PC programmer needs to know.

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Edition details

• Publisher: Addison Wesley
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 020162687X
• ISBN 13: 9780201626872
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512