Reply to note from Edward Mendelson Tue, 28 Jan 2020 20:54:54 -0500
> This is really brilliant programming. It makes it possible to
> shell to DOS in the same way that WordPerfect and other programs
> did back in the DOS era. Thank you for it.
>
> Kari, assuming that it's all right with Wengier, I hope you might
> consider replacing the old start.exe with Wengier's new version in
> the vDos-Xy installer.
I agree, Edward, but think we may want to allow a little more time to
shake out the wrinkles before adding the new start.exe to the standard
vDosPlus package or the Xy installer. In my early testing, I'm getting
some odd results, depending on the argument I supply. For example -- and
in all of these examples CMDS.LST does *not* exist -- when I command
start.exe dir
or
start.exe dir x*
I get a dialog that asks "How do you want to open this file?" and lists
possible Windows programs.
But if I command
start.exe dir/p
nothing happens; same result with start.exe xcopy and start.exe xcopy /?.
And if I command
start.exe attrib
the output of the attrib command quickly scrolls by in a cmd.exe window,
which then closes.
The inconsistent behavior when the argument string is identical to a
built-in or external Windows command is a bit unsettling. For myself, I
would expect start.exe arg to behave just like cmd.exe /c start. With no
argument, cmd.exe /c start opens a new cmd.exe window, so that's good.
With cmd.exe /c start arg, if arg is a Windows command, it executes the
command, and if arg is a filename, (a) if the file exists, it either
opens the file in its associated Windows application or displays the
dialog that asks "How do you want to open this file?", or (b) if the file
does not exist, throws up the Windows error message box that says,
"Windows cannot find [filename]. Make sure you typed the name correctly,"
etc.
And, lest anyone forget, we need start.exe because cmd.exe /c start, when
executed from a DOS program, causes a cmd.exe window to flash by, whereas
start.exe does the job cleanly.
I think start.exe is very close to perfect, and hope that Wengier will
weigh in on the above.
--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxxxx