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From: bsa@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: MS-DOS braindamage
Message-ID: <748@ncoast.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 30-Jun-85 15:54:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: ncoast.748
Posted: Sun Jun 30 15:54:04 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Jul-85 03:59:21 EDT
References: <229@timeinc.UUCP> <7700007@prism.UUCP>
Reply-To: bsa@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery)
Followup-To: net.micro.pc
Organization: North Coast Xenix, Cleveland, OH
Lines: 55

Expires:

Quoted from <7700007@prism.UUCP> ["Re: Changing the dumb '\' to '/'..."], by matt@prism.UUCP...
+---------------
| /**** prism:net.micro.pc / ukc!rde / 10:32 am  Jun 22, 1985 ****/
| 
| One  thing  you might try on DOS 3.x is to change the SWITCHAR using the
| system call (I too am not certain that it exists, though), then invoke a
| second copy of COMMAND. This should read the revised value and  get  the
| desired effect (at a small loss in available memory).
| 
| /* ---------- */
| 
| This DOES work, and you do NOT have to load a second copy of the
| command processor - the original copy will know about the new switch
| character.
| 
| The DOS call of interest is function 37 (hex), which is listed as
| reserved for DOS's use.  If function 37 is executed with AL set to
| 0, the current switch character is returned in DL.  If it is
| executed with AL set to 1, the value in DL becomes the new switch
| character.
+---------------

It didn't seem to work on here (ITT DOS 2.11/1.0, apparently MS-DOS 2.11),
but that may have been a mistake of mine; I was trying to hack through it
with DEBUG.COM, without much documentation.

+---------------
| While we're on the subject of hacking DOS 3.1, does anyone know the
| new location to patch in command.com to increase the environment
| size to something reasonable?  You would think after all this time
| that the Microsoft clones would realize that 128 bytes is just too
| small!  (Fascinating that they though it was more important to
| include the ability to specify the last disk drive letter in DOS
| 3.0, but didn't think of allowing you to specify the environment
| size!  Now THAT would be a useful thing to put in config.sys.
+---------------

Why don't they just use dynamic environments?  MS-DOS can handle 32K in
the environment (says my manual), why don't they REALLOC the memory when
they add or delete environment variables?

BTW, I put in the MS-DOS 2.x patch for larger COMMAND environments; I
didn't look to see if it worked, because the new COMMAND.COM wouldn't
load my AUTOEXEC.BAT any more.  Anybody know why?

One last question.  The LEADING EDGE PC runs MS-DOS 2.11 (or is it 2.13);
the COMMAND on there groks %env-var% in batch scripts.  Is this a feature
of MS-DOS 2.13, Leading Edge COMMAND.COM, or what?  (It sure doesn't work
on MY system, that I can see.)

--bsa
-- 
Brandon Allbery, Unix Consultant -- 6504 Chestnut Road, Independence, OH 44131
decvax!cwruecmp!ncoast!bsa; ncoast!bsa@case.csnet; +1 216 524 1416; 74106,1032
========================> Trekkies have Warped minds. <=======================