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From: brown@nicmad.UUCP (Mr. Video)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Patches to PC-DOS 3.30
Message-ID: <1666@nicmad.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 17-May-87 17:56:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: nicmad.1666
Posted: Sun May 17 17:56:54 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 18-May-87 03:41:01 EDT
References: <1658@nicmad.UUCP> <5986@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP>
Reply-To: brown@nicmad.UUCP (Mr. Video)
Distribution: na
Organization: Mr. Video's Hangout
Lines: 28

In article <5986@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> davidsen@kbsvax.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) writes:
<In article <1658@nicmad.UUCP> brown@nicmad.UUCP (Mr. Video) writes:
<>
<>Well, I tried to patch my copy of PC-DOS 3.30 and managed to make it crash.
<>
<>It is different enough that one of the two mods for turning off echo doesn't
<>work.  It so happens to be the one for the autoexec.bat handling.
<
<Why would you ever want to do that? DOS3.3 has a way to disable echo
<selectively in the batch file. Why mess with patches?
<
<Any line starting with @ is not echoed. Thus, if the first line
<is @ECHO OFF, nothing echos. As for blank echos, if you put a dot
<after the echo command (and nothing else) it just gives you a blank
<line (as: "echo."). That's been in every version since 2.0!
<
<I hate patching the system, and try to use existing features when possible.
<I hate to admit it, but IBM listened on this one.

True, very true.  But, what if you had LOTS of batch files out there and you
didn't want to go and edit all of them so that the @ is used to suspend output
of certain lines.  By patching PC-DOS 3.30, you only play with one file and
all the rest won't have to be touched.
-- 
	 harvard-\     ihnp4--\
Mr. Video   seismo!uwvax.......!nicmad!brown
	 rutgers-/    decvax--/
		    terminus-/