[6] However, initial releases of the operating system did not provide user-level method for reading or changing these values.

[7] Subsequent versions allowed the read-only, hidden, system and archive bits to be set.

[8] MS-DOS version 3.3 added the capability of recursive searching through subdirectories to display attributes of specified files.

[9] Digital Research DR DOS 6.0[10] and Datalight ROM-DOS[11] also include an implementation of the ATTRIB command.

[14] Manipulating the archive bit allowed users to control which files were backed up using the BACKUP command.