lane@dalcs.UUCP (John Wright/Dr. Pat Lane) (02/22/88)
Well, after my posting about the program path in the environment (why is
it undocumented and gereally unused), I got several resposes informing me
that it was a new feature in DOS 3.00 and it was documented in the Tech
Ref for same. Guess it's time to upgrade my 2.00 version!
Anyway, here's a couple more. I have been seriously tempted to dive into
COMMAND.COM and see if there's a way to make string comparissons in batch
IF statements *non* case-sensitive. I'm really tired of going "IF 'a==...
IF 'A==... IF 'b:==... IF 'B:==..." , and so on ad nauseum. What ever
possesed them to do that the way they did?!
So has it been done? Is there a patch I can use? I think I have a freeware
utility some where that does this but I'd rather use a DOS patch if it can
be done.
One more. I have patched my COMMAND.COM so that ECHO followed by at least one
space produces a blank line instead on the stupid "Echo is on/off". I have
seen batch files supplied with commercial software which use "echo" followed
by a DEL or some non-printing ascii char to accomplish this. Then, a few
days ago, someone pointed out that ECHO followed by a period would do the
trick. Sure enough it did. I was shocked and amazed! :-) When did this
happen? I can't find it in DOS manuals for 3.00, 3.20 and 3.30. Anybody
got some background on this?
Cheers,
John Wright
PS. Is there a patch to make DOS act like a decent operating system (like
Unix)? Just kidding...
--
John Wright ////////////////// Phone: 902-424-3805 or 902-424-6527
Post: c/o Dr Pat Lane, Biology Dept, Dalhousie U, Halifax N.S., CANADA B3H-4H8
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