computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...

, help is a

command Command may refer to: Computing * Command (computing), a statement in a computer language * command (Unix), a Unix command * COMMAND.COM, the default operating system shell and command-line interpreter for DOS * Command key, a modifier key on A ...

in various

command line A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

shells such as COMMAND.COM,

cmd.exe 






cmd.exe, a.k.a. Command Prompt, is a shell  program on later versions of Windows ( NT and  CE families), OS/2,,  eComStation,  ArcaOS, and ReactOS. In some versions of Windows ( CE .NET 4.2,  CE 5.0 and  Embedded CE 6.0) it is referred to as  ...

, Bash, qshell,

4DOS 4DOS is a command-line interpreter by JP Software, designed to replace the default command interpreter COMMAND.COM in MS-DOS and Windows. It was written by Rex C. Conn and Tom Rawson and first released in 1989. Compared to the default, it has ...

/ 4NT,

Windows PowerShell PowerShell is a shell program developed by Microsoft for task automation and configuration management. As is typical for a shell, it provides a command-line interpreter for interactive use and a script interpreter for automation via a langua ...

, Singularity shell,

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (prog ...

MATLAB MATLAB (an abbreviation of "MATrix LABoratory") is a proprietary multi-paradigm programming language and numeric computing environment developed by MathWorks. MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementat ...

and

GNU Octave GNU Octave is a scientific programming language for scientific computing and numerical computation. Octave helps in solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a language that is mostly ...

. It provides online information about available commands and the shell environment.

Implementations

The command is available in

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s such as

Multics Multics ("MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service") is an influential early time-sharing operating system based on the concept of a single-level memory.Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System", Communications of t ...

, Heath Company HDOS, CP/M Plus,

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

eComStation eComStation or eCS is an operating system based on OS/2 Warp for the 32-bit x86 architecture. It was originally developed by Serenity Systems and Mensys BV under license from IBM. It includes additional applications, and support for new hardwa ...

ArcaOS ArcaOS is a Proprietary software, proprietary operating system based on OS/2, developed and marketed by Arca Noae, LLC under license from IBM. It was first released in 2017 and builds on OS/2 Warp 4.52 by adding support for new hardware, fixing ...

IBM i IBM i (the ''i'' standing for ''integrated'') is an operating system developed by IBM for IBM Power Systems. It was originally released in 1988 as OS/400, as the sole operating system of the IBM AS/400 line of systems. It was renamed to i5/OS in 2 ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

ReactOS ReactOS is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source operating system for i586/amd64 personal computers that is intended to be binary-code compatibility, binary-compatible with computer programs and device drivers developed for Wind ...

, THEOS/OASIS,

Zilog Zilog, Inc. is an American manufacturer of microprocessors, microcontrollers, and application-specific embedded System on a chip, system-on-chip (SoC) products. The company was founded in 1974 by Federico Faggin and Ralph Ungermann, who were soo ...

Z80-RIO,

Microware Microware Systems Corporation was an American software company based in Clive, Iowa, that produced the OS-9 real-time operating system. Microware Systems Corporation existed as a separate entity from 1977 until September 2001, when it was boug ...

OS-9 OS-9 is a family of real-time, process-based, multitasking, multi-user operating systems, developed in the 1980s, originally by Microware Systems Corporation for the Motorola 6809 microprocessor. It was purchased by Radisys Corp in 2001, a ...

Stratus Stratus may refer to: Weather *Stratus cloud, a cloud type **Nimbostratus cloud, a cloud type **Stratocumulus cloud, a cloud type **Altostratus cloud, a cloud type ** Altostratus undulatus cloud, a cloud type **Cirrostratus cloud, a cloud type Mu ...

OpenVOS, HP MPE/iX,

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

VERSAdos,

KolibriOS KolibriOS is an open-source operating system for x86 computers, written completely in FASM assembly language. It has been developed since 2004, forked from MenuetOS, and supports i586 CPU, CPUs or newer. KolibriOS is small sized and fits on a sin ...

and also in the DEC

RT-11 RT-11 (Real-time 11) is a discontinued small, low-end, single-user real-time operating system for the full line of Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11 16-bit computers. RT-11 was first implemented in 1970. It was widely used for real-time compu ...

RSX-11 RSX-11 is a discontinued family of multi-user real-time operating systems for PDP-11 computers created by Digital Equipment Corporation. In widespread use through the late 1970s and early 1980s, RSX-11 was influential in the development of later ...

TOPS-10 TOPS-10 System (Timesharing / Total Operating System-10) is a discontinued operating system from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) for the PDP-10 (or DECsystem-10) mainframe computer family. Launched in 1967, TOPS-10 evolved from the earlier "Mo ...

and

TOPS-20 The TOPS-20 operating system by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) is a proprietary OS used on some of DEC's 36-bit mainframe computers. The Hardware Reference Manual was described as for "DECsystem-10/DECSYSTEM-20 Processor" (meaning the DEC PDP ...

operating systems. Furthermore it is available in the

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

DOSBox DOSBox is a free and open-source MS-DOS emulator. It supports running programs primarily video games that are otherwise inaccessible since hardware for running a compatible disk operating system (DOS) is obsolete and generally unavailab ...

and in the EFI shell. On

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

, the command is part of the

Source Code Control System Source Code Control System (SCCS) is a version control system designed to track changes in source code and other text files during the development of a piece of software. This allows the user to retrieve any of the previous versions of the origin ...

and prints help information for the SCCS commands.

Multics

The

help command prints descriptions of system commands/active functions and

subroutine In computer programming, a function (also procedure, method, subroutine, routine, or subprogram) is a callable unit of software logic that has a well-defined interface and behavior and can be invoked multiple times. Callable units provide a ...

s. It also prints various information about the system status, system changes, and other general information. This information is selected from segments maintained online, which are in a special format, called information segments. More than 800 information segments are available.

DEC OS/8

The DEC

OS/8 OS/8 is the primary operating system used on the Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-8 minicomputer. PDP-8 operating systems which precede OS/8 include: * R-L Monitor, also referred to as MS/8. * P?S/8, requiring only 4K of memory. * PDP-8 4K ...

CCL help command prints information on specified OS/8 programs."Concise Command Language" (CCL).

DOS

MS-DOS

The help command is available in

5.x and later versions of the software. The help command with a 'command' parameter would give help on a specific command. If no arguments are provided, the command lists the contents of DOSHELP.HLP. In MS-DOS 6.x this command exists as FASTHELP. The MS-DOS 6.xx help command uses

QBasic QBasic is an integrated development environment (IDE) and BASIC interpreter, interpreter for a variety of dialects of BASIC which are based on QuickBASIC. Code entered into the IDE is compiled into an intermediate representation (IR), and this ...

to view a quickhelp HELP.HLP file, which contains more extensive information on the commands, with some hyperlinking etc. The MS-DOS 6.22 help system is included on

Windows 9x Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a line of discontinued Microsoft Windows operating systems released from 1995 to 2000 and supported until 2006, which were based on the kernel introduced in Windows 95 and modified in succeeding version ...

CD-ROM versions as well.

PC DOS

PC DOS PC or pc may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Player character or playable character, a fictional character controlled by a human player, usually in role-playing games or computer games * '' Port Charles'', an American daytime TV soap opera * ...

5 and 6 help is the same form as MS-DOS 5 help command. PC DOS 7.xx help uses view.exe to open OS/2 style

INF file An INF file (setup Information file) is an INI plain-text file used by Microsoft Windows-based operating systems for the installation of software and drivers. INF files are most commonly used for installing device drivers for hardware compone ...

s (cmdref.inf, dosrexx.inf and doserror.inf), opening these to the appropriate pages.

PC-MOS

The Software Link The Software Link, Inc. (TSL) was a company in Norcross, Georgia, Norcross, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia that developed software for personal computers from 1986 to 1994. The company was co-founded by Rod Roark and Gary Robertson. Products * PC ...

PC-MOS PC-MOS/386 is a multi-user, multitasking computer operating system produced by The Software Link (TSL), announced at COMDEX in November 1986 for February 1987 release. PC-MOS/386, a successor to PC-MOS, can run many MS-DOS programs on the host ...

includes an implementation of help. Like the rest of the operating system, it is licensed under the

GPL v3 The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first c ...

DR-DOS

DR-DOS DR-DOS is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles, originally developed by Gary A. Kildall's Digital Research, Inc. and derived from Concurrent PC DOS 6.0, which was an advanced successor of CP/M-86. Upon its introduction in 198 ...

, help is a

batch file A batch file is a Scripting language, script file in DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows. It consists of a series of Command (computing), commands to be executed by the command-line interpreter, stored in a plain text file. A batch file may contain a ...

that launches DR-DOS' internal help program, dosbook.

ROM-DOS

Datalight Datalight was a privately held software company specializing in power failsafe and high performance software for preserving data integrity in embedded systems. The company was founded in 1983 by Roy Sherrill, and its headquarters is in Bothell, W ...

ROM-DOS Datalight was a privately held software company specializing in power failsafe and high performance software for preserving data integrity in embedded systems. The company was founded in 1983 by Roy Sherrill, and its headquarters is in Bothell, ...

includes an implementation of the command. ROM-DOS was introduced in 1989 as an MS-DOS compatible operating system designed for embedded systems.

FreeDOS

The

FreeDOS FreeDOS (formerly PD-DOS) is a free software operating system for IBM PC compatible computers. It intends to provide a complete MS-DOS-compatible environment for running Legacy system, legacy software and supporting embedded systems. FreeDOS ca ...

version was developed by Joe Cosentino.

4DOS/4NT

The 4DOS/4NT help command uses a

text user interface In computing, text-based user interfaces (TUI) (alternately terminal user interfaces, to reflect a dependence upon the properties of computer terminals and not just text), is a retronym describing a type of user interface (UI) common as an ear ...

to display the online help.

cmd.exe

Used without parameters, help lists and briefly describes every system command.

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

-based versions use MS-DOS 5 style help. Versions before

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

also have a Windows help file (NTCMDS.HLP or NTCMDS.INF) in a similar style to MS-DOS 6.

PowerShell

PowerShell PowerShell is a shell program developed by Microsoft for task automation and configuration management. As is typical for a shell, it provides a command-line interpreter for interactive use and a script interpreter for automation via a langu ...

, help is a short form (implemented as a PowerShell function) for access to the Get-Help Cmdlet. Windows PowerShell includes an extensive, console-based help system, reminiscent of man pages in Unix. The help topics include help for cmdlets, providers, and concepts in PowerShell.

GNU Bash

In Bash, the builtin command help' lists all Bash builtin commands if used without arguments. Otherwise, it prints a brief summary of a command. Its syntax is: help dms attern

OpenVMS

HELP is a DCL utility that contains information on the use of commands and descriptions of some OpenVMS concepts such as time formats and lexical functions, as well as lists of commands for a particular purpose (HELP Hints).

Syntax

The command-

syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

is: help ommand Arguments: *command This

command-line argument A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

specifies the name of the command about which information is to be displayed.

Examples

DOSBox

Z:\>help If you want a list of all supported commands type help /all . A short list of the most often used commands: Directory View. Display/changes the current directory. Clear screen. Copy files. ...

Python

>>> help Type help() for interactive help, or help(object) for help about object. >>> help() Welcome to Python 2.5! This is the online help utility. If this is your first time using Python, you should definitely check out the tutorial on the Internet at https://www.python.org/doc/tut/. Enter the name of any module, keyword, or topic to get help on writing Python programs and using Python modules. To quit this help utility and return to the interpreter, just type "quit". ...

GNU Octave

octave-3.0.0.exe:1> help Help is available for the topics listed below. Additional help for built-in functions and operators is available in the on-line version of the manual. Use the command `doc ' to search the manual index. ...

References

External links

help , Microsoft Docs
{{Unix commands Multics commands External DOS commands MSX-DOS commands OS/2 commands ReactOS commands Windows commands IBM i Qshell commands Microcomputer software Windows administration Technical communication Software help