Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!calvin.spp.cornell.edu!richard
From: richard@calvin.spp.cornell.edu (Richard Brittain)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 4dos quirks
Message-ID: <1990May9.033611.28146@calvin.spp.cornell.edu>
Date: 9 May 90 03:36:11 GMT
References: <12407@bclcl1.im.battelle.org> <1990May5.014627.2792@ednor.bbc.com> <38880@brunix.UUCP> <1990May8.125326.601@ednor.bbc.com>
Reply-To: richard@calvin.spp.cornell.edu (Richard Brittain)
Organization: Cornell Space Plasma Physics Group
Lines: 31

In article <1990May8.125326.601@ednor.bbc.com> cgf@ednor.bbc.com (Chris Faylor) writes:
>In article <38880@brunix.UUCP> cs132071@cslab5g.cs.brown.edu (Joel Scotkin) writes:
>>The problem is that 4dos has a special setting in the setdos environment
>>which controls what character is currently being used as a "switch". 
>>This is normally set to the `/` key, and this can cause problems, and
>>just doesn't work so well when you want to change directory.
>
>I am aware of this setting, but I didn't think it was necessary in this case.
>I was under the (mis?) impression that it was not necessary to use backslashes
>where the command was known to 4dos and took no qualifiers.  The candidates

4DOS 2.21 handled cd /dir/subdir with no problems, but 3.0 has a problem with
it.  It seems that the command line parsing was entirely re-written for 3.0
and is mostly more consistent now, but there are still quirks.  I run with
"setdos /w-" most of the time, and this works with nearly everything commonly
use.  For those that don't work, I alias them to "setdos -w/^command^setdos /w-"

The main problem with using the switchar is that 4dos.com doesn't know about
it, only 4dos*.exe - so you still need to generate "4dos /c command" in a 
system() call or other "Shell to dos" type call.  With "4dos -c command" you
get  an annoying diagnostic about swapping, then "-c command not found", and
finally "command" is actually executed correctly.  I hope this gets fixed in
the next version.  The other problem with using the switchar is that it can
be tricky to use setdos to change it back - you have to know what the current
setting is before you can do anything.  I keep a variable %_SWITCH at all times
so my batch files will work in either mode.

Richard Brittain,                   School of Elect. Eng.,  Upson Hall   
                                    Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
ARPA: richard@calvin.spp.cornell.edu	
UUCP: {uunet,uw-beaver,rochester,cmcl2}!cornell!calvin!richard