Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hp-ses!hpcuhb!hpda!hpcupt1!rpepin
From: rpepin@hpcupt1.HP.COM (Roger Pepin)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: c.b.i.p.d  Was: Re: Environment Space
Message-ID: <12630003@hpcupt1.HP.COM>
Date: 11 Feb 89 00:39:59 GMT
References: <1134@khoo.sdl.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino
Lines: 35

/ hpcupt1:comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d / khoo@sdl.UUCP (Yong Khoo) /  6:43 am  Jan 30, 1989 /
Can anyone provide info on expanding environment space for COMMAND.COM.

My copy of setenv.exe that comes with Microsoft C 5.0 does not seem

to work with MSDOS 3.20.

Thanks
----------

I am not an expert on DOS, but my understanding is that the environment is
expanded automatically by DOS as it needs it (from your initial command.com
started at boot time).
The expansion is done modulo some byte size (I forgot: 16 is what comes to
mind).
When your run a program from command.com, the current environment is copied
for that program, just below the program. This means that the actual copy
of the environment available to the running program is fixed in size (other
wise it would overwrite the program itself).

No matter how large you attempt to set the initial environment (from
config.sys, or using a utility), command.com will truncate the copy
of the environment created for the program you run to the next block size
from the currently used environment.

If you have a program that needs a larger environment then what command.com
gives it, try to define dummy environment variables (to force a new block
to allocated).
If that dosn't work, set variables with a long definition, to reserve that
environment space. Then reset the definitions, or change them, from the
application program you run.

If you need more information, you may want to communicate with Daniel
Palmans (same computer asme, login name dpalmans), as he got stuck with
this problem and explained it to me.