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C's system() & COMMAND.COM (Developers)

posted by bretjohn Homepage E-mail, Rio Rancho, NM, 17.09.2014, 20:42

> IFF an internal command ends in .COM/.EXE, which is sick.
The fact that you think it's "sick" is irrelevant. You could have some or all of the following with the same name: a COM, EXE, BAT, and BTM file, a 4DOS alias, a DOSKEY macro, an INT 2F.AE internal extension, and an internal command (and the may even be other possibilities you could add to the list). If the user simply types the name at a command line, what happens?

The answer actually depends on what brand and version of DOS is being used, teh environment, and what TSR's and device drivers are loaded as well. What various versions of MS-DOS does is described here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/35284

What your program should do is the same thing that would happen if the user simply typed the same thing at the command-line. The problem is there's no way you can know what that is. The only sane thing you can do is a "%COMSPEC% /C ..." and figure out some other way to return the ErrorLevel if that's critical to you.

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