Stupid CP/M question

Apparently I was unclear. You can use wildcards * and ? to specify the file on B:. They work the same way as in DOS. So you can type PIP A:=B:*.COM copies all .COM files PIP A:=B:???.COM copies all .COM files with three-char names PIP A:=B:*A.COM copies all .COM files (surprise!) Obviously we agree on this part. If you specify ONLY ONE file on B:, you can rename it on A:. PIP A:DEBUG.COM=B:DDT.COM copies B:DDT.COM to A:DEBUG.COM By "one" I meant "only one", not "each". Does that help? Did you think I wrote something entirely different? Yes, it should have. And the more MS waited to improve DOS (because there was no incentive since they already had a monopoly, or because they were sloppy programmers, or for backward-compatibility reasons) the more excruciating the thought of improvements which would break old programs became. If they had just ripped off a better OS, that might have been nice as well. Something with long file names, or multitasking, or whatever. And OSs of the time DID have long file names. I don't know about multitasking (maybe OS/9 or FLEX were around when DOS was born?). There was a column in, I think, _MacWeek_. It went roughly like this: Steve Jobs, in a fit of angst, wishes the Mac had never been born. A guardian angel (a la _It's a Wonderful Life_) grants him his wish. We read about the Apple corporate headquarters (with a big "Microsoft South" sign out front), as well as an Internet cafe. The cafe only has a few people, typing away on clunky monochrome PC clones (running DOS 15.5). Jobs says, "Those people look like math professors!" "They *are* math professors!" (obvious, I guess). With no fancy graphics or GUI, only a math professor would want to use the Internet. :) Of course the column was self-serving of Apple, glossing over the things Apple has inflicted on the computer industry. But it does make the point that incentives to quality are necessary, especially where Microsoft is concerned. -- Derek