Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!gatech!mcnc!decvax!decwrl!hplabs!sdcrdcf!trwrb!scgvaxd!wlbr!etn-rad!jru
From: jru@etn-rad.UUCP (John Unekis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Environment space size?
Message-ID: <325@etn-rad.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jan 88 18:44:11 GMT
References: <1900@ukecc.engr.uky.edu> <554@leah.Albany.Edu> <39592@ti-csl.CSNET>
Reply-To: jru@etn-rad.UUCP (John Unekis)
Distribution: na
Organization: Eaton Inc. IMSD, Westlake Village, CA
Lines: 30
Keywords: environment variables size

In article <39592@ti-csl.CSNET> khill@home.UUCP (Ken Hill - Patents) writes:
>In article<554@leah.Albany.Edu>emb978@leah.Albany.Edu ( Eric M. Boehm) writes:
>.
>.Also note that no environment variable can occupy more than 127 (128?) bytes
>.each!
>.
>This limit has just bitten me for the PATH variable.  Is there any way
>to have a PATH which is longer than this?  Some of the alternate
>methods posted here recently are fine, but some software wants to
>hunt the PATH looking for various things, and I don't want to store
>everything close to the root directory. (Reaching 3 subdirectories each
>3 levels down burns up that 128 bytes real fast)
>...
My usual solution to the inadequate path string size is to utilize the 
SUBST command in my autoexec.bat file . For instance-

PATH=c:\;c:\dos\;c:\dos\subdir1\;c:\dos\subdir1\subdir2\

...becomes...

SUBST G: c:\dos
SUBST H: c:\dos\subdir1
SUBST I: c:\dos\subdir1\subdir2
PATH=c:\;g:\;h:\;i:\

The SUBST command does not use any environment space(so far as I can tell).

NOTE: you will need to add a line to file config.sys that says-
LASTDRIVE=Z        (so that DOS will let you use the whole alphabet as 
		     substitute drive letters)