david@marvin.jpl.oz (David Magnay) (10/02/90)
We have been happily using the MKS Toolkit under DOS 3.x for some time, with minor occasional hiccups. However, it appears to be fundamentaly incompatible with 4.xx. The SWCHAR system call still exists, where the DOS switch char can be altered from '/' to '-'. An incidental consequence of this was that the path separator char altered from '\' to '/', as it should have been all along!! :-) Under DOS 4.xx, DOS ignores the character, even though the call to set it still exists. This means that '\' must be used as the path separator. To get this under MKS ksh, you have to enter '\\' instead of '\'. It breaks lots of scripts, and is in general a pain ? Has anyone solved this problem ? Many others must have faced it, or will soon. One possible solution is to hack DOS to patch its comparison character from '\' to '/' in its path parsing routines, but this seems beyond the abilities of us mortals. Any good ideas ??? PLEASE [ anyone feel like writing a PD DOS. (Dont laugh, I meant it seriously) Personally, I would fire my people if they inflicted it upon a generally unsuspecting public ;-> ]