Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 16:32:05 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: "A.Appleyard" <A DOT APPLEYARD AT fs2 DOT mt DOT umist DOT ac DOT uk>
Cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: `SET DJGPP = ...' defining a variable `DJGPP ' with space
In-Reply-To: <5A5E7F60B7@fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960319163133.20848F-100000@is>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Mon, 18 Mar 1996, A.Appleyard wrote:

> > Actually, the second blank (after the `=' sign) is harmless; it's the one
> > *before* `=' which causes trouble, because it defines a variable called
> > "DJGPP " (with the blank in the name) and thus the DJGPP startup code
> > doesn't find a variable "DJGPP".
> 
> However did that silly bug get into Messy-Dos and stay there through all these
> years and versions!?!? Before any desktop computer was heard of, my university
> had a mainframe whose operating system language decoder was `fascist' about
> spaces and insisted on ONE space as a parameter separator, no more or less;
> but I thought such nuisances had passed away long ago.

Not in MS-DOS, they didn't.