Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!samsung!emory!att!watmath!mks.com!andy
From: andy@mks.com (Andy Toy)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: Re: switchar anyone?
Message-ID: <1990Sep4.165921.6697@mks.com>
Date: 4 Sep 90 16:59:21 GMT
References: <3388@ecs.soton.ac.uk> <105625@convex.convex.com>
Reply-To: andy@mks.com (Andy Toy)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Mortice Kern Systems, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 18

In article <105625@convex.convex.com> harper@convex.com (David Harper) writes:
>Unfortunately, there are a bunch of programs out there which have checks for
>'\' and '/' hard coded into them.  Setting the switchar won't work with these
>programs.  A far better way is a TSR which interperts the command line before
>it is passed to the application (or command.com).  This TSR would automatically
>translate '/' to '\' and '-' to '/' so that the application would see what it
>was expecting.  

This will work most of the time, but there are some cases where this
will not work.  DOS allows both slashes for path delimiters.  Lots of
programmes already accept both `/' and `\' for the path delimiter and
always use `-' for the switch character.  Changing `-' to `/' is not
correct for programmes that always use `-' for options.  Then there are
those obscure programmes that use *BOTH* `-' and `/' for options.
-- 
Andy Toy, Mortice Kern Systems Inc.,       Internet: andy@mks.com
  35 King Street North, Waterloo,       UUCP: uunet!watmath!mks!andy
      Ontario, CANADA N2J 2W9      Phone: 519-884-2251  FAX: 519-884-8861