Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!tekcrl!tekgvs!toma
From: toma@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: BEWARE of changing the command line switch (switchar)
Keywords: switchar COMMAND.COM
Message-ID: <4100@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM>
Date: 18 Oct 88 18:29:40 GMT
References: <824@kksys.UUCP>
Reply-To: toma@tekgvs.GVS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy)
Distribution: na
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.
Lines: 24

In article <824@kksys.UUCP> bird@kksys.UUCP (Mike Bird) writes:
>
>BEWARE: When you change the command line switch on COMMAND.COM, there are
>quite a few products that no longer will work.

Some more non-working programs when switch char is changed:

Windows 386
WordPerfect 5.0 (n4.2 understands switch char)
system() in Microsoft "C" (possibly others as well)

About 50% of the programs I have with shell escape commands do not
work with switch char changed because they have wired in to
exec "command /c".  In fact there seems to be an increasing number of
programs that don't support switch char any more. 

I have ended up dropping the changed switch character.  Maybe what is
needed is to make UN*X more MSDOS like rather than the other way
around.  Why can't I change the file name delimiter character from
'/' to '\' in UN*X?

Tom Almy
toma@tekgvs.TEK.COM
Standard Disclaimers Apply