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From: jrv@siemens.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: command name and DOS 3.x
Message-ID: <23900012@siemens.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Mar-86 14:23:00 EST
Article-I.D.: siemens.23900012
Posted: Wed Mar 12 14:23:00 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Mar-86 05:51:56 EST
References: <1301@voder.UUCP>
Lines: 41
Nf-ID: #R:voder:-130100:siemens:23900012:000:1258
Nf-From: siemens!jrv    Mar 12 14:23:00 1986




The information you are looking for is on page 7-7 of the DOS Technical
Reference where it describes the make-up of the environment strings:

	"The environment is a series of ASCII strings
	 (totaling less then 32K bytes) in the form:

		NAME=parameter

	 Each string is terminated by a byte of zeros, and
	 the entire set of strings is terminated by another
	 byte of zeros.

{ i.e. two zero bytes in a row is the end of the environment strings }
{	or if a zero byte starts what you think is an environment    }
{	variable then you are at the end of the list		     }

			Following the byte of zeros that
	 terminates the set of environment strings is a set of
	 initial arguments passed to a program that contains
	 a word count followed by an ASCIIZ string. The

{ ASCIIZ is a string with a zero byte following it.		     }
{								     }
{ Does anyone know what the 'word count' is a count of?? My simple   }
{	tests always had a value of 1 in this word.		     }

	 ASCIIZ string contains the drive, path, and
	 filename[.ext] of the executable program."

The above, minus my comments between '{}' is copyrighted by IBM.


Hope this is of assistance.

Jim Vallino
Siemens Research and Technology Labs
Princeton, NJ
{ihnp4,allegra}!princeton!siemens!jrv