In BBC BASIC, OS commands are preceded with an asterisk or passed via the OSCLI keyword, to instruct BASIC to forward that command directly to the OS. This led to the asterisk being the prompt symbol for any software providing an OS command line; MOS version 3 onwards officially uses the asterisk as the command prompt symbol. When referring to an OS command, they generally include the asterisk as part of the name, for example , , etc., although only the part after the asterisk is the command. The asterisk was called a "star" and the commands were called "star commands".