DOS

The DOS, Disk Operating System was a very basic Microsoft OS with only text as display. User was able to use his computer with commands

In RACE, the DOS consists of various methods designed to facilitate file management.

DOS Commands

DOS Commands are compatible with Neurox. See the following page for more information : DOS Compatibility

Name	Description	Usage
MOVE	move a specific file or folder to another path	MOVE path1 path2
COPY	copy a specific file or folder to another path and delete it from the original path	COPY path1 path2
REN	rename a file or a folder to a specific string given by the user	REN path1
DEL	remove a file from a specific path	DEL path1
RMDIR	remove a directory from a specified path. Note that the directory must be empty otherwise it won't be deleted	RMDIR path1
MKDIR	create a directory in a specified path	MKDIR path1
CAT	show in the console the content of a file in a specified path	CAT path1
ECHO	create a specific file in a given path with a given name	ECHO content path1 name file_type
DEBUG	activate or deactivate the DOS debug mode	DEBUG

Permission handler

The DOS handles files and users permissions. See Permissions for more information.

Debug handler

The DOS provides explicit error messages and stores them in a log table :

local DOS = {}

DOS.logs = {
    ["2025-01-03 23:22:22.166"] = {
        ["message"] = "Boot loaded correctly. Loading...",
        ["message_type"] = "Info",
        ["origin"] = "BIOS (Boot): "
    }
}

return DOS

Every instances of the system update the DOS logs every time an action is finished. The DOS logs only store critical and warning messages if the debug mode is not activated. To activate it, run the command DEBUG in Neurox or in a DOS console. The log system adopts a specific vocabulary explained in this table :

Origin (the origin is where the error or the information was found.)

The origin is written like this, for instance : NI (readCode) This means that the Origin is NI, and it is from a public method called readCode().

Code	Description
DOS	just the DOS
NI	Neurox Interpreter
BIOS	Basic Input/Output System
OS	Operating System

Message type

The message type gives an explicit context on the log message.

Code	Description
Critical	The action resulted in an exception, meaning that it got stopped unexpectedly. This error is rarely caused by the user themself, because it usually indicates a system bug
Warn	An action was not or not fully performed. This is usually because the user did something not expected.
Info	Everything works fine. The message is just a piece of information or a success message. Is shown if debug mode is activated.

Important methods

These methods are usually used by the system, and their apparition in the log table may be frequent. To understand them, we listed some of them here.

Method	Origin	Description
readCode()	NI	Main method of the interpreter. It works as described in The basics
handleDosResult()	NI	Handle the errors of neurox native functions
parseVar()	NI	Create variables in the RACE environment specified in a neurox script
CheckSysVar()	BIOS	Check for system variables after a POST
CheckOs()	BIOS	Check presence of an OS in the file structure