markz@microsoft.UUCP (Mark Zbikowski) (07/24/84)
"... I created a autoexec.bat file to do all this, but I get an Out of Environment space error when I boot the system..." The manual should be amended to read: The environment will be grown (not reallocated) when possible. Precluding conditions are: Batch file in progress (batch files allocate a section of memory) Program in progress (memory is allocated to the program) Terminate-and-stay-resident program (memory is allocated) Your autoexec.bat case is contained in case 1. The environment is not reallocated due to potential memory fragmentation. Remember: the semantics of the MSDOS alloc routine are reasonable close to those of malloc; do enough of them and you fragment up the world. Trying to explain fragmentation to a naive user (which, by the way, 99% of all PC users are) is difficult. We made the choice in favor of the simpler interface rather than the somewhat-unpredictable 'better' case. There are some unsupported patches you may make. See the article by Weissman in the latest PC magazine. He patches COMMAND to be a little more shell-like and expandds the memory allocation (I believe) in the process.