Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!amos!hartung
From: hartung@amos.ling.ucsd.edu (Jeff Hartung)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: BEWARE of changing the command line switch (switchar)
Summary: How I handle problems created by changing the options character
Keywords: switchar COMMAND.COM
Message-ID: <5410@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: 21 Oct 88 03:38:23 GMT
References: <824@kksys.UUCP> <930@proxftl.UUCP>
Sender: nobody@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU
Reply-To: hartung@amos.UUCP (Jeff Hartung)
Followup-To: hartung@amos.ling.ucsd.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: Univ. of Calif., San Diego
Lines: 38

>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.
>
In article <930@proxftl.UUCP> markd@proxftl.UUCP (Mark Davidson) writes:
>
>Alas, this is too true.  If you purchase the MKS Toolkit (highly recommended
>for Unix(R) fans), and you use the Korn shell supplied with it, you find out
>exactly what programs don't handle this correctly.  The documentation supplied
>with the toolkit is kind enough to point some of these out.

After finding out which programs don't like using "/" as a path separator and
"-" as an option character, I make a batch file for those programs that uses
the MKS Toolkit command "switch" (which is what changes the option character
in the first place in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file) to change the option character
back to "/" before executing the command, then again to change it back after
execution is completed.  Clumsy, but it works.  I usually give the batch file
a different name and then alias it using MKS Toolkit's alias command in
AUTOEXEC.BAT to the actual .EXE file it is to represent.

AS for the Korn shell, I'm not really all that impressed with it.  Yes, it
does resemble a Bourne shell, but I don't find the occasion to use it all that
often and the Korn shell itself seems to have problems with some programs that
work fine with COMMAND.COM as the command interpreter.  However, I may be
prejudiced as I tried this early in my experimenting with the MKS Toolkit and
may have learned how to deal with those problems by now.

The most disappointing feature was the login shell which I really wanted to
work like a U*IX login shell, but which offered no file protection for
individual users at all and seemed to be mostly a pain in the a**.  Sure, it
might limit access somewhat, but it didn't seem to be worth the effort just to
give different users a home directory and option of using "sh" vs COMMAND.COM.
When I want to use the Korn shell, I run it from COMMAND.COM as a subshell.

 --Jeff Hartung--  	
 Disclaimer: "Nobody here really cares what I think anyhow."
 ARPA - hartung@amos.ling.ucsd.edu          
 UUCP - !ucsd!ling!amos!hartung  (I think!  Just got this account recently.)