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From: ward@chinet.UUCP (ward)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Problem: duplicate .BAT and .COM in DOS 3.3
Message-ID: <1243@chinet.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Jun-87 14:05:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: chinet.1243
Posted: Mon Jun 29 14:05:37 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 1-Jul-87 01:32:05 EDT
References: <302@ashtate.UUCP>
Reply-To: ward@chinet.UUCP (Ward Christensen-)
Distribution: world
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 16
Keywords: DOS 3.3 BAT batch

To the best of my knowledge, PC-DOS has never looked at file extensions
typed as command names.  In your message you mentioned being surprised
that DOS 3.3 has COM files override BAT and EXE, so FOO.COM and FOO.BAT
in the same dir causes FOO.COM to run.
  "Right".  DOS has always been that way - just tested it on DOS 2.0,
3.2, and Toshiba T1100+ 2.11 - all ignore any extension, as has always
been my experience.  I often see people typing "edlin.com filename" and
things like that - and never understood why.
  Ideally DOS would work like this: if a bat file exists, run it; if
the bat file refers to the same name, run the COM or EXE.  This would
allow overriding COM and EXE with BAT yet still running the underlying
executable code.  A good example would be FORMAT.BAT which could execute
FORMAT.COM, but for now, you've got to rename format.com formatx.com or
something.
  Did YOU have a version of DOS that "understands" file extensions when
executing commands or batch files?