FILE  

A place on a disk that holds some data or a program. To tell the computer to 
do something to a file, the file has to have a filename. A filename may have 
up to 8 characters, and may be followed by a period (.) and an extension. DOS 
commands to manipulate files are summarized in the SUMMARY FILE_MANIPULATION 
topic.

		FILENAME.EXT
		/	   \
	filename	   extension

Filenames can include letters (A through Z) and numbers (0 through 9). "A" 
and "a" are equivalent in a filename. Other characters such as !, #, $, and
_ can be used, but occasionally some program may object. DOS 4.0 users can 
include many of the international characters in filenames. The DOS special 
characters listed in the NEW_TERMS SPECIAL_CHARACTERS definition should not 
be used. 

Some filenames, called device names, have special meaning to DOS. They are
listed in the NEW_TERMS DEVICE_NAMES topic. Adding an extension to a device 
name is usually allowed, but it is still a device name.
