Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!spool.mu.edu!news.cs.indiana.edu!maytag!watstat.waterloo.edu!dmurdoch
From: dmurdoch@watstat.waterloo.edu (Duncan Murdoch)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Redirecting I/O for .BAT files?
Message-ID: <1991Jun20.123522.10793@maytag.waterloo.edu>
Date: 20 Jun 91 12:35:22 GMT
Article-I.D.: maytag.1991Jun20.123522.10793
References: <45670020@hpcupt3.cup.hp.com> <45670022@hpcupt3.cup.hp.com>
Sender: news@maytag.waterloo.edu (News Owner)
Organization: University of Waterloo
Lines: 32

In article <45670022@hpcupt3.cup.hp.com> defaria@hpcupt3.cup.hp.com (Andy DeFaria) writes:
>
>Begin { Foo }
>  Exec ('D:\COMMAND.COM', 'D:\COMMAND.COM /C C:\ANDY\FOO.BAT > FOO.OUT');
>  Writeln ('DOSError = ', DOSError);
...
>
>When this is run I see:
>
>Specified COMMAND search directory bad
>DOSError = 0
>
>written to the screen and in examining FOO.OUT I find simply:
>
>DOSError = 2
>
>Now what am I doing wrong?

You forgot a /C at the start of the command line.  It should be

  Exec ('D:\COMMAND.COM', '/C D:\COMMAND.COM /C C:\ANDY\FOO.BAT > FOO.OUT');

The first /C tells the first command processor that what follows is a command,
and the second one tells the second processor that the batch file is a command.
I think the first command processor is the one that sees and acts on the
'> FOO.OUT', so that the second command processor already has STDOUT redirected.

A possibly simpler way to achieve the same thing is to use the FORCDUP DOS call
to redirect STDOUT into a file.  That method can also be used to redirect
STDERR, if you want to do that.

Duncan Murdoch