Advanced MS-DOS Programming is written for the experienced C or assembly-language programmer. It provides all the information you need to write robust, high-performance applications under the MS-DOS operating system. Because I believe that working, well-documented programs are unbeatable learning tools, I have included detailed programming examples throughout——including complete utility programs that you can adapt to your own needs.
This book is both a tutorial and a reference and is divided into four sections, so that you can find information more easily. Section 1 discusses MS-DOS capabilities and services by functional group in the context of common programming issues, such as user input, control of the display, memory management, and file handling. Special classes of programs, such as interrupt handlers, device drivers, and filters, have their own chapters.
Section 2 provides a complete reference guide to MS-DOS function calls, organized so that you can see the calling sequence, results, and version dependencies of each function at a glance. I have also included notes, where relevant, about quirks and special uses of functions as well as cross-references to related functions. An assembly-language example is included for each entry in Section 2.
Sections 3 and 4 are references to IBM ROM BIOS, Microsoft Mouse driver, and Lotus/Intel/Microsoft Expanded Memory Specification functions. The entries in these two sections have the same form as in Section 2, except that individual programming examples have been omitted.
The programs in this book were written with the marvelous Brief editor from Solution Systems and assembled or compiled with Microsoft Macro Assembler version 5.1 and Microsoft C Compiler version 5.1. They have been tested under MS-DOS versions 2.1, 3.1, 3.3, and 4.0 on an 8088-based IBM PC, an 80286-based IBM PC/AT, and an 80386-based IBM PS/2 Model 80. As far as I am aware, they do not contain any software or hardware dependencies that will prevent them from running properly on any IBM PC—compatible machine running MS-DOS version 2.0 or later.