Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!geneva.rutgers.edu!hedrick From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: MKS Toolkit questions Keywords: MKS Message-ID: Date: 29 May 89 03:41:23 GMT References: <1283@esunix.UUCP> Distribution: na Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 34 You can install the MKS toolkit in several ways, depending upon how much compatibility with Unix you want. The minimum way gives you a bunch of Unix-compatibility utilities that you call as DOS programs from COMMAND.COM. That should always be safe. It gives you the commands you're used to from Unix, but not a Unix shell. Since COMMAND.COM knows about > < and in some limited way |, you might find it livable. Next is to run ksh from AUTOEXEC.BAT. That does use memory, though not a lot (sorry, I don't know the exact number). That would work with almost all DOS programs. Finally, you can replace COMMAND.COM completely. If any program is somehow expecting to use a piece of COMMAND.COM (e.g. for error handling), this could cause trouble. Another issue is using / for file names and - for options instead of \ and /. There's a command that does that change. It uses an undocumented feature of DOS to change the "switch character". I do that, but it's optional. Most software works OK that way, but now and then some doesn't. MKS has suggested changes that will get lots of things working, but in the worst case you may have to live with \. The problem is that this was never a documented part of MS-DOS, so some software doesn't support it. Apparently it is becoming more of a problem in newer releases of DOS. Changing \ and / to / and - used to be a more or less supported feature, but it looks like Microsoft is trying to get rid of it. In DOS 3.2 most of DOS knows what is going on, and displays file names with / when you tell it to. One reasonable approach would be to talk to MKS and tell them what version of DOS and what other software you are using. They seem to know what problems there are with most of the standard software. They'll be able to tell you how much Unix emulation you can get with what you're using. They seem to give pretty good support. There's a good chance that you'll be able to get a fairly completely Unix emulation. Speed doesn't seem to be an issue. I've seen no signs of the MKS stuff being slower than the normal DOS utilities. It's real DOS software, after all. It just acts like Unix software. There's no reason for it to have any more overhead than other DOS software.