Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!turing.toronto.edu!west
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
From: west@turing.toronto.edu (Tom West)
Subject: MS-DOS EXEC Question
Message-ID: <1990Sep7.144359.25202@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu>
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Date: 7 Sep 90 18:43:59 GMT
Lines: 22

  Does anyone know what the behaviour of the EXEC MS-DOS function is when 
there is not enough memory to load COMMAND.COM.  

Specifically, I have a line that is:

	retcode = spawnve(P_WAIT, "C:\COMMAND.COM", path, environ);

where path is defined char *path[2], path[0] is a pointer to C:\COMMAND.COM
and path[1] is a null pointer.

  The problem that I encounter is when there is very little free memory
available, the call locks up.  Using Codeview, I determined that in fact, 
it's the MS-DOS EXEC function that is locking up the system with an illegal
instruction.  I thought that MS-DOS EXEC was supposed to return a not enough
memory return code in this case.  Anybody know what DOS really does?  

  MS tech support could only tell me that if I had run it on a bunch of 
different machines and gotten the same result (I had), it was definitely 
behaviour of MS-DOS.  The tech did not know if it was documented anywhere.

					Tom West
					west@turing.utoronto.ca