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From: heja@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de (Herbert Jaegle)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: Re: MS-DOS 3.30A and "SHELL=" in CONFIG.SYS (SLOWness)
Message-ID: <1990Oct18.190259.18802@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de>
Date: 18 Oct 90 19:02:59 GMT
References: <1990Oct12.224956.21168@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <9849@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu> <1236@netmbx.UUCP>
Organization: Rechenzentrum der Universitaet Freiburg, Deutschland
Lines: 32

tom@netmbx.UUCP (Thomas Filz) writes:

>Hey, why would anybody want such a long path? Ever thought about the time 
>you would save with a shorter path and a batch directory for calling all
>those application programs? 

On your own little PC with a stable configuration of applications and
utilities this may be acceptable. But what if you are managing 50 PCs
with 15 or more application programs, compilers using more than one
directory for programs (such as C600 (bin, binb)). You are looking for
.EXE, .COM files writing batch files for each one. .BAT files have to be
called by "Call". And what would happen if an application uses batch
files to call executables ? They may not use "call", so if they are calling
your script, they never return.
Have you ever tried to remove an application with more than one executable ?
What about updates ?
You do not known all names ? -- much fun.

But there is another problem with long PATHs. Some systems are truncating PATH, others are crashing if the PATH exceeds maximum length. For example 
HP MS-DOS 4.01 does.

Use short names and hope ...

Herbert

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Herbert Jaegle   MAIL:  Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems
DL7GAP                  Oltmannsstr. 22
                        D 7800 Freiburg, West Germany
                 EMAIL: heja@ise.fhg.de
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