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From: ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi LASK)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: MS-DOS EXEC Question
Message-ID: <1990Sep9.063941.27673@uwasa.fi>
Date: 9 Sep 90 06:39:41 GMT
References: <1990Sep7.144359.25202@jarvis.csri.toronto.edu> <eJB8o4w163w@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us>
Organization: University of Vaasa
Lines: 29

In article <eJB8o4w163w@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us> mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) writes:
>west@turing.toronto.edu (Tom West) writes:
>>   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);
>[computer locks up when there isn't enough mem to load COMMAND.COM]
>
>This isn't going to help you much, but I've encountered this in
>Zenith's MS-DOS v3.21 also.  Your best bet might be to check to see if
>there's at least 50K left, and refuse to spawn the command processor
>if there isn't.

This is somewhat of a sideline since I use Turbo Pascak instead of
C.  If you try to execute a shell of a single command in TP, you can
test for the result of the operation and take appropriate action. 
The example demonstrates executing a single command. 

SwapVectors;
Exec (GetEnv(comspec), '/c ' + 'your command');
SwapVectors;
If DosError <>0 then whatever;

...................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi        (Moderating at anon. ftp site 128.214.12.3)
School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland
Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: gado::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun