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From: hovdesta@herald.usask.ca (Alfred Hovdestad)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: How can I set a PATH longer than 128 bytes ?
Message-ID: <1990Mar27.181609.673@dvinci.usask.ca>
Date: 27 Mar 90 18:16:09 GMT
References: <2221@bwdls58.UUCP>
Sender: news@dvinci.usask.ca
Reply-To: hovdesta@herald.usask.ca
Organization: University of Saskatchewan
Lines: 56

From article <2221@bwdls58.UUCP>, by mlord@bwdls58.bnr.ca (Mark Lord):
> In article <1990Mar14.172308.21398@seri.gov> marshall@wind55.seri.gov (Marshall L. Buhl) writes:
> <<<mlord@bnr-rsc.UUCP (Mark Lord) writes:
> <<<<How can I set my dos PATH variable longer than 128 bytes?  I'm running
> <<<You need APPENV21.ARC from simtel20.  I use it to set my own 500 byte PATH.
> <<                                                              ~~~~~~~~
 
 ....extensiv discussion deleted...
I have been following this discussion for several postings now and
it seems to me that everyone is trying to kill a cockroach with a
bazooka.  Instead of always telling people that this is THE way to
do what you are trying to do, why not find out if this is what he
really needs.  I ran into the same problem with my own path last year.
I wanted to seperate my files into logical (to me) directorries, but
I found that I could not get all the directories that I was using into 
my path.  After looking at what I was doing, I came up with the
following solution:
 
  I noticed that I has all of my language directories, and editor
directories and communication directories always in my path.  When I am
writing a C program, I have no need for KERMIT in my path, same for
CLIPPER.  What I did was write a little batch utility like so:

setpath.bat
------------------------------------
path=c:\;c:\dos;c:\bat;c:\bin;c:\pcwrite
if "%1" == "" goto exit
goto %1
:kermit
path=%path%;c:\kermit
goto exit
:c
path=%path%;c:\compiler\c
goto exit
:exit
echo path
----------------------------------------------

and one like this:

addpath.bat
---------------------
if "%1" == "" goto exit
path=%path%;%1
:exit
echo path
------------------------------

This way, I was able to quickly change paths by entering
setpath c
without typing in the whole path.  It also had the added benefit
of increasing my search time because I was able to maintain a shorter
path.
A