Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!cica!iuvax!silver!hchen
From: hchen@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (H. Chen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: How can I set a PATH longer than 128 bytes?
Message-ID: <38222@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 8 Mar 90 00:24:18 GMT
References: <5762@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM> <31300010@inmet> <25f1ea76.25da@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU>
Sender: root@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
Reply-To: hchen@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (H. Chen)
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Lines: 28

In article <25f1ea76.25da@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU> jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck) writes:
>1.  Don't nest your directories.  Use a separate directory off the root
>for each main package of software.  This makes it easy to type directory
>names and keeps them shorter in the path.

The other way to get around this problem is to "nest" your directories 
properly.  That is, put your subdirectory for data files under your
program's subdirectory, for instance,

	\rbase          all your rbase programs go here
	\rbase\app1	all your application #1 files using rbase go here
	\rbase\app2	all your application #2 files using rbase go here
	\lotus		all your lotus programs go here
	\lotus\pro1	all your project #1 files using lotus go here...
	......

Now, put "..\" in your path statement.  You don't need "c:\rbase;c:\lotus"
anymore.  It will eliminate the length of path statement and enhance the
program file search speed.  You may set up some batch file to bring you 
into different application subdirectories.

Causion, this does apply to DOS or whatever utilities which you want to
call from anywhere.

che

(p.s.  I read this from PC Magzine or other pc magzine.  Since nobody
mention this so far, I put here according to my memory.)