Merely curious about the etymology of the Windows environment variable %COMSPEC%. I understand it (usually) points to cmd.exe.
The best I could find online is Command Specifier, which sounds reasonable.
command linems-doswindows
Merely curious about the etymology of the Windows environment variable %COMSPEC%. I understand it (usually) points to cmd.exe.
The best I could find online is Command Specifier, which sounds reasonable.
Best Answer
In regards to the etymology, it's self-referential.
%COMSPEC%
does stand for Command Specifier, and it "specifies" the command interpreter, which by default iscmd.exe
in NT systems, andCOMMAND.COM
in DOS systems.You can modify the variable to point to any secondary interpreter you want (this is a DOS example):