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From: nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: PC-DOS 3.1 strangeness
Message-ID: <316@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-Jan-86 22:44:20 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.316
Posted: Mon Jan 27 22:44:20 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Jan-86 04:29:44 EST
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 24
Keywords: weird, uncanny, off-the-wall

In upgrading from PC-DOS 2.1 to 3.1 I expected some incompatibilities, but
I have really only encountered one, and it baffles me.

I use the (undocumented) DOS function 37h to reset "switchar"
to the character "\" so I can use the "/" as a path separator, as in Unix.
I also use the Microsoft C v3.0 compiler, which uses environment strings
to find things, and uses the PATH string to locate its executable code.
All this worked fine under PC-DOS 2.0 and 2.1.  In moving to DOS 3.1, I
find the driver programs (cl.exe and msc.exe) are unable to follow a path
which uses "/" as a separator; it only works with the separator "\".  Yet
exactly the same program works correctly under DOS 2.x.  All the programs
I have which use the DOS functions "Find First" and "Find Next" work as
before under 3.1.

Does anyone know why there should be this difference between the two
versions of PC-DOS?  Is there any way it might be fixed?

Any help would be much appreciated.  I await your wisdom ...

-- 
Ed Nather
Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin
{allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather
nather@astro.UTEXAS.EDU