Editing List of DOS commands (section)

===ECHO===
{{Main|echo (command)}}

The ECHO command prints its own arguments back out to the DOS equivalent of the [[Standard streams|standard output stream.]] (Hence the name, ECHO) Usually, this means directly to the screen, but the output of ''echo'' can be redirected, like any other command, to files or devices. Often used in [[batch file]]s to print text out to the user.

Another important use of the echo command is to toggle echoing of commands on and off in batch files. Traditionally batch files begin with the <code>@echo off</code> statement. This says to the interpreter that echoing of commands should be off during the whole execution of the batch file, thus resulting in a "tidier" output (the <code>@</code> symbol declares that this particular command (echo off) should also be executed without echo.)

The command is available in MS-DOS versions 2 and later.<ref name="RUNNINGMSDOS" />