[TAG] Dos based Web Crawling/DOS based Web Robot

[Mike Orr]

On Sun, Nov 21, 2004 at 10:03:24AM -0500, Ben Okopnik wrote:
> > What I am looking for is someone who still knows how to program DOS.

What do you mean by "programing DOS"?  You don't write programs in an
operating system, you write programs in a programming language.  DOS 4
came with GWBASIC and the EDIT full-screen editor.  That would at least
give you the minimal tools to write a program.  But I don't know how
you'd contact another computer since there were no socket commands or
TCP/IP stack.  DOS 3.3 and before came with just batch files (DOS commands)
and the EDLIN line-oriented editor.  You can't do much of anything with
those except put a menu on the screen, run programs, and configure DOS.

So you'd have to install additional libraries or software.  First off
Trumpet Winsock, a TCP/IP stack you may still be able to find at an FTP
site somewhere.  Then you'd have to figure out how to get a GWBASIC
program to interface with Winsock and monitor replies from the remote
computer -- I have no idea how you'd do that, but if you're a hacker you
should be able to figure it out using PEEK and POKE commands to send
individual bytes to specific memory addresses.  Most people in this
situation would install a C compiler and write a C program.  However, free
software wasn't popular in those days in the DOS world, so you'd either
have to buy a shareware program or find one of Microsoft's compilers at
Half Price Books -- that is, assuming you could find a bookstore that
still carries it.  Perhaps eBay can help.  Or you could install Perl, but
at that point I fail to see what the difference is between writing the
program in DOS and writing it in Linux.

-- 
-Mike Orr (aka. Sluggo), mso at oz.net  (iron at sense-sea-MegaSub-1-465.oz.net)
   http://sluggo.kicks-ass.org/                  Cxu vi parolas Esperante?