On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 9:45 PM, Andrew Robins <arob...@fastmail.fm> wrote: >> The second PATH statement above will override the first, so Access >> will work, but stuff in FDOS\BIN won't. To have more than one >> directory in the PATH, use ; as the separator between directory names: >> >> PATH C:\XX;C:\FDOS\BIN > > Aha - thanks Dennis for the rescue (on yet another OS thread) - I must > have included an extra space after my semi-colon in previous > experiments. Cheers and kuDOS
Unix/Linux works the same way, save that the separator is a colon, and /, not \, is the directory char. In older version of DOS (2.X?) you could specify the option delimiter character in CONFIG.SYS. If you set the option delimiter to something other than /, you could use \ or / in pathnames. Under MS-DOS, I ran a package called the MKS Toolkit. The Toolkit was a commercial package that included DOS versions of all the Unix utilities that made sense in the single-user. single tasking environment. It included a complete implementation of the Korn shell, with everything save asynchronous sub-processes (because DOS couldn't *do* that.) The Toolkit included a utility called switchar which would let you reset the option delimiter to - and use Unix style path names in the Korn shell. Installed in fullest Unix compatibility mode, the Toolkit replaced COMMAND.COM with MKS INIT.EXE as the boot shell. Drivers (like EMS, ramdisk, cache, and mouse drivers) were loaded in CONFIG.SYS, then INIT ran. It printed Login: on screen and waited for a userid. When I entered one (with optional password), it called /bin/login.Login looked in a *nix compatible /etc/passwd file, and if it found the ID, it changed to whatever was listed as that ID's home directory and ran whatever was listed as that ID's shell. Exit the shell, and INIT was reloaded. This made things convenient, as I could switch environments without rebooting. I had IDs that ran the Korn shell, 4DOS, vanilla COMMAND.COM, and DesqView. Unfortunately, some DOS apps were hard-coded to expect / as the option delimiter and \ as the directory char, so I had to play with aliases and scripts to run them successfully in the MKS environment. (Run switchar to set the option delimiter to /, run the DOS app, run switchar again set the the delimiter back to =.) MS-DOS 3.3 had system calls to query what the option delimiter char was and to set it to something else. MS-DOS 5.0 removed the call to set it, but kept the one to query what it was. (Don't ask *me* why...) Fortunately, the MKS Toolkit still ran, or I would have gone back to 3.3. I kept the Toolkit in place for Win 3.1- Win 3.X defaulted to using Program Manager as the shell, but could be told to use something else in the SYSTEM.INI file. I played wit an assortment of replacements, and used MKS IDs that would alter SYSTEM.INI to use the one I preferred, then run Windows. (I also still had the other IDs, and could choose not to run Windows.) I had to give it up when Win9X arrived, but it was fun while it lasted. ______ Dennis https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_jan _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
