I've been working on a little tool now for a while, and deciced to release it to public:

TAB4DOS v1.0.0

A small resident utility (9kb TSR) for MS-DOS that adds bash-style TAB completion, command history, and command-line editing to the standard COMMAND.COM prompt:

Download / source
Release v1.0.0 (tab4dos.exe)
Source on GitHub

Features

• TAB / Shift+TAB — complete and cycle matches (forward / backward) for files, directories, path fragments, DOS internal commands, and executables found on PATH.
• Up / Down — browse command history (64 entries), replaces DOSKEY
• Line editing — Left/Right, Home/End, Del, Ins (insert/overwrite), Ctrl+Left/Ctrl+Right (jump word), ESC (clear line).
• Small footprint — ~9 KB resident. The command list and the history ring are kept in small files (TAB4DOS.IDX / TAB4DOS.HST) next to the EXE (or in %TEMP% with /usetemp), not in resident memory; with SmartDrive these reads/writes are effectively RAM-speed.
• See full changelog for more details

Usage

1tab4dos          install (resident)
2tab4dos /u       uninstall
3tab4dos /?       help

Full readme on Github: https://github.com/Projanglez/TAB4DOS

Notes

• Tested on real 386 hardware. Not tested under DOSBox — DOSBox has its own TAB completion that overlays this one, so results there are not meaningful.
• Free and open source (MIT).
• This software was developed with the help of an AI coding assistant (Claude Code).

Feedback and reports are very welcome!