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From: nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: PC-DOS 3.1 strangeness (Cont'd)
Message-ID: <317@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-Jan-86 23:36:19 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.317
Posted: Mon Jan 27 23:36:19 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Jan-86 04:29:56 EST
References: <316@utastro.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 30
Keywords: weird, uncanny, off-the-wall

A bit of experimenting has localized the problem I described in the
referenced message:  the PATH variable I use on a 2-floppy PC with a
RAMdisk as drive C has the entry

     PATH=C:/;A:/bin; ...

which causes no trouble to the DOS 2.1 command.com or to the Microsoft
compile&link program cl.exe under DOS 2.x.  Under DOS 3.1, however,
cl.exe seems to think the "/;" character pair is a switch, and it
is unable to use the PATH string beyond that point.  The DOS 3.1
command.com is happy with it, however.  There is a kludge-fix:  

     PATH=C:/.;A:/bin ...

seems to work, at least under DOS 3.1; cl.exe finds things in a:/bin,
and other programs find things in the root file of RAMdisk drive C.

I guess I'm still confused about the problem -- why should there be a
difference between the way cl.exe follows a path under DOS 3.1 and the
way it follows the SAME path under DOS 2.1?

"The path to enlightenment is a path of contemplation, not a path
of struggle ..."
                                   Gautama Buddha

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