Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!madd
From: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: EXEC call (was: Re: shell script program for pc)
Message-ID: <19737@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 6 Feb 88 21:04:29 GMT
References: <2638@cup.portal.com> <5706@eecae.UUCP> <19318@bu-cs.BU.EDU> <2890@cup.portal.com> <2026@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: madd@bu-it.bu.edu (Jim Frost)
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: Boston University Distributed Systems Group
Lines: 23

In article <2026@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>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.
[...]
>...I don't think they can be doing much
>parameter parsing that is not documented.

If you parse the command line and build FCB's, then all the MS-DOS
utilities will work. CHKDSK and FORMAT both use the FCB "drive" field
to determine which drive to use, instead of going to the extra effort
of parsing out the drive name from the command line.  Sort of a short
cut.

jim frost
madd@bu-it.bu.edu