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From: mrd@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Mark Dobie)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: switchar anyone?
Message-ID: <3388@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: 13 Aug 90 09:12:12 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of Southampton, UK
Lines: 29

OK, so I discovered switchar and I have set it to '-' to make my PC
look more like UNIX. This is PC-DOS 3.3.

I have found a few problems and have a few questions.

Is switchar still supported in the latest MSDOS/PCDOS?

Although I can use '-' for options and '/' for pathnames, this
doesn't work all the time.

For instance, I can say 'dir /bin/foo' or 'dir \bin\foo' or even
'dir \bin/foo', but if I try to execute it, ie '/bin/foo' I get an
EXEC error. Is this a problem with command.com?

Also, if I start another command.com (within the one I set the switchar
in), the prompt shows up with forward slashes (UNIX style). ANy idea
how I can make the top level command.com do this?

And, of course, many programs don't bother checking it. Even PCDOS
utilities like xcopy and tree. If only people like Microsoft and
Borland provided a getopt function for option argument processing,
then it could do the checking.

Thanks a lot

-- 

Mark Dobie                              M.Dobie@uk.ac.soton.ecs (JANET)
University of Southampton		M.Dobie@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Bitnet)