Date: Fri, 24 Nov 1995 08:06:12 -0200
From: Cesar Scarpini Rabak <csrabak AT dmeasc DOT ipt DOT br>
Sender: Cesar Scarpini Rabak <csrabak AT dmeasc DOT ipt DOT br>
Reply-To: Cesar Scarpini Rabak <csrabak AT dmeasc DOT ipt DOT br>
Subject: Re: A DOS bug that may cause trouble for djgpp users
To: "A.Appleyard" <A DOT APPLEYARD AT fs2 DOT mt DOT umist DOT ac DOT uk>
Cc: DJGPP AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu



On Thu, 23 Nov 1995, A.Appleyard wrote:

> As hereinunder, Messy-DOS's *.BATfile caller goes BATs when it finds an `=' in
> an argument. This may cause obscure trouble for people who call a Gnu C/C++
> program via a *.BAT . I have MS-DOS 6.22 . <-------- marks lines that I typed.
> 
> C:\AMZIP>TYPE T$.CC           <------------
> #include<stdio.h>
> main(int nargs,char**Arg){int i;
> for(i=0;i<nargs;i++) printf("%4dth arg is `%s'\n",i,Arg[i]);}
> C:\AMZIP>TYPE T$$.BAT               <-------------
> t$.exe %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8
> C:\AMZIP>t$ cat=and=mouse=games     <----------------
>    0th arg is `c:/amzip/t$.exe'
>    1th arg is `cat=and=mouse=games'
> 
> C:\AMZIP>t$$ cat=and=mouse=games        <------------------
> 
> C:\AMZIP>t$.exe cat and mouse games
>    0th arg is `c:/amzip/t$.exe'
>    1th arg is `cat'
>    2th arg is `and'
>    3th arg is `mouse'
>    4th arg is `games'
> 
This idiosincrasy of MS-DOG is more or less known, (though I cannot 
remember where is it explained in fully to give you folks a pointer),
however, if you need to put one of the line arguments like the example above,
just enclose the whole argument with quotation marks like:

t$$ "cat=and=mouse=games".

This should do the trick.

Incidentally, the root of this behaviour is credited to COMMAN.COM, 
probably users of other (replacement) shells for MS-DOG shoud not have 
this sort of problem (except if it emulates exactly this behaviour, of 
course!).