Command Interpreter Window

After you start the command prompt window you can enter commands as if you were running an old-time DOS computer. You should see something like the following:

In the above, the line of text

 C:/>

is a prompt. You are expected to enter commands to the system after it. Depending on how your computer has been set up, you may see a prompt something like this:

 C:/WINNT/System32>

This prompt means that the command interpreter is automatically expecting to use files in the directory C:/WINNT/System32. This is called the default directory. (A directory is a section of the disk that has a name. A directory can hold many files.) You should not use the C:/WINNT/System32 directory.

It doesn't matter where you start out because you can always move to where you want to be using the CD command. For now, let us create a Java program in the C:/Temp directory. To get to this directory type the following commands:

C:
CD /Temp

Type these commands in after whatever command prompt you see. The prompt changes to show the current default directory. The first command C: switches to the C: disk (which is the hard disk of the system if you have only one). The second command CD /Temp makes C:/Temp the default directory.