Message-ID: <32547605.20B6@cs.com> Date: Thu, 03 Oct 1996 19:27:17 -0700 From: "John M. Aldrich" Reply-To: fighteer AT cs DOT com Organization: Three pounds of chaos and a pinch of salt MIME-Version: 1.0 To: DJGPP Workers Mailing List Subject: Re: Stub error messages (Was: Re: 'Cannot open') References: <9609300343 DOT AA13628 AT clio DOT rice DOT edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Charles Sandmann wrote: > > You can't create this path condition - you must boot a floppy without > a path statement to have it set up that way. It's a DOS bug that it > creates an environment variable with an assignment of zero length. If > you issue the SET command and see "PATH=" (nothing following) then this > is the appropriate problem case. Trying to set a zero length PATH will > normally remove it completely, so you wouldn't see the problem. I have just tested the modification to the stub that Charles posted and it does in fact work on my system. I had to jump thru hoops to get the error condition in the first place, though! It turns out that if you even have a CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT, no matter what is in them, DOS will create correct environment settings. Considering that the only way to cause the problem to occur is to boot from a clean floppy, and that this also means that the other required environment settings would not exist (DJGPP variable, for example), I'm amazed that this problem has appeared as often as it has. Anyway, since my custom stub will now run correctly, I'm going to have to remember to put in a check for a NULL PATH in my program itself. Complications, complications... :) -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- | John M. Aldrich, aka Fighteer I | fighteer AT cs DOT com | | Plan: To find ANYONE willing to | http://www.cs.com/fighteer | | play Descent 2 on DWANGO! | Tagline: | ---------------------------------------------------------------------