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From: markz@microsoft.UUCP (Mark Zbikowski)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: re: environment growth
Message-ID: <8702@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Jul-84 14:53:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: microsoft.8702
Posted: Tue Jul 24 14:53:40 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jul-84 03:36:31 EDT
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Lines: 23


	"... I created a autoexec.bat file to do all this, but I get
	an Out of Environment space error when I boot the system..."

The manual should be amended to read:

	The environment will be grown (not reallocated) when possible.  Precluding
	conditions are:

		Batch file in progress (batch files allocate a section of memory)
		Program in progress (memory is allocated to the program)
		Terminate-and-stay-resident program (memory is allocated)

Your autoexec.bat case is contained in case 1.  The environment is not
reallocated due to potential memory fragmentation.  Remember:  the semantics
of the MSDOS alloc routine are reasonable close to those of malloc; do enough
of them and you fragment up the world.

Trying to explain fragmentation to a naive user (which, by the way, 99% of
all PC users are) is difficult.  We made the choice in favor of the simpler
interface rather than the somewhat-unpredictable 'better' case.  There are
some unsupported patches you may make.  See the article by Weissman in the
latest PC magazine.  He patches COMMAND to be a little more shell-like and
expandds the memory allocation (I believe) in the process.