Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!hp-pcd!hplsla!davidr
From: davidr@hplsla.HP.COM (David M. Reed)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Increasing Environment Space
Message-ID: <3130012@hplsla.HP.COM>
Date: 10 Jul 90 00:32:52 GMT
References: <90183.141937SLVQC@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Organization: HP Lake Stevens, WA
Lines: 24

Ever since HP started selling MS-DOS it has included a "Personal Application
Manager" program (PAM) for starting applications.  This is great for non-DOS
users who do not want to learn/remember a few simple commands to issue from
the DOS prompt.  One problem I have had with PAM for years is that no matter
how much environment space you reserve on startup (SHELL=COMMAND /E:xxxx), any
unused environment appears to be "truncated" (like at the next paragraph
boundary after what is used).  This has lent itself to the annoying/frustrating
"Insufficient environment" messages from BATch files.

I find that MSWindow3 is exhibiting the same kind of "wrong" behaviour.  Thus
I must do what I have done for years with PAM users.  In my AUTOEXEC.BAT file
I set one or more large variables, e.g.

     SET X=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Then, one of the first statements in a BATch file is "SET X=".  This will
clear the "place-holder" variable, freeing up all memory it was reserving.
There is no error if X was not previously SET, and it take virtually no
additional startup time.  Since DOS command lines are limited to 128 
characters, if I need a lot of memory reserved I SET several such variables.
This seems to work just fine with MSWindows3 and PAM, with only a little
extra effort on my part (that I should not have to do, if these programs
would not grab "currently unused" environment space that I had reserved
in CONFIG.SYS).