Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 10:07:58 +0300
From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
Sender: halo1 AT zahav DOT net DOT il
To: "Dykstra Sean" <Sean_Dykstra AT maxtor DOT com>
Message-Id: <2593-Fri14Sep2001100758+0300-eliz@is.elta.co.il>
X-Mailer: Emacs 20.6 (via feedmail 8.3.emacs20_6 I) and Blat ver 1.8.9
CC: "djgpp AT delorie DOT com"
	<68C4CF842BD2D411AC1600902740B6DA02CDC5A4 AT mcoexc02 DOT mlm DOT maxtor DOT com>
	(Sean_Dykstra AT maxtor DOT com)
Subject: Re: Various spawns
References:  <68C4CF842BD2D411AC1600902740B6DA02CDC5A4 AT mcoexc02 DOT mlm DOT maxtor DOT com>
Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

> From: "Dykstra, Sean" <Sean_Dykstra AT maxtor DOT com>
> Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 11:59:19 -0600
> 
> I have discovered a slightly bizarre behaivoir in the spawn/system commands,
> when smartdrv is NOT loaded into memory.

What happens with smartdrv?

> If I boot to a DOS system without smartdrv loaded, any spawn command I issue
> with parameters is very slow.
> 
> However, if I do not pass any parameters, I get to the DOS prompt very
> quickly and then can issue DOS commands very quickly.

What version of DJGPP is that?  system("") should have invoked the
ssytem shell (COMMAND.COM, I presume); doesn't it?

spawnvp with an empty second argument should simply fail and return
immediately with a negative value.  What is the value it returns?

> I get the same response using spawnlp and spawnvp.

Please show the exact way you called these functions.  It's best to
post a short but complete program which exhibits the behavior together
with the description of its behavior on your machine, so that others
could try to compile it and see if they can reproduce the same
behavior.