Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!umd5!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!iuvax!bsu-cs!dhesi
From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: EXEC call (was: Re: shell script program for pc)
Message-ID: <2026@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: 3 Feb 88 04:03:50 GMT
References: <2638@cup.portal.com> <5706@eecae.UUCP> <19318@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <2890@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 20

In article <2890@cup.portal.com> Robert_C_Tellefson@cup.portal.com writes:
>In
>particular, some of the most difficult programs to execute properly are
>DOS utilities (ie., FORMAT.COM), as these programs take advantage of
>their 'inside knowledge' to parse their command lines in non-standard
>fashions.  To replace command.com successfully in these cases, you must
>duplicate (to the letter) its manner of parsing and putting command lines
>together.

Well, maybe.  When I wrote Looz 2.1, which can extract an executable
programs from a zoo archive directly into memory for execution, I had
to figure out how to load a program, set up file control blocks, do any
relocation needed for EXE files, etc.  I obtained helped from a sample
assembly program for the EXE header format (thanks, Michael), but for
all other information I depended exclusively on "Advanced MSDOS:
Microsoft's guide for Assembly Language and C programmers" written by
Ray Duncan.  Since Looz successfully extracts and executes all the
MSDOS utilities I've tried, I don't think they can be doing much
parameter parsing that is not documented.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi