From: firewind <firewind AT metroid DOT dyn DOT ml DOT org>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Newbie Coder Seeks Helful Advice ;)
Date: 2 Oct 1997 23:18:10 GMT
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Ian Chapman <ichapman AT nortel DOT ca> wrote:
> Matthew,
>      the %path% I've not seen that in the dos manual where does
> this %  % use come from I was curious the first time I installed
> djgpp.

Inside a batch file (and ONLY inside a batch file; this does not -ever- work
at the command line) anything beginning with % is interpreted specially. As
you probably know, %1 through %9 are the arguments, %0 is a sort of argv[0].

Another way % can be used is to show an environment variable. For example, if
you have an environment variable:

FOO=xyzzy

then a batch file containing the line:

echo %FOO%

will produce the output 'xyzzy'. What is being done with PATH is, a new
directory is added to the beginning, and the rest of the old path gets
tacked on the end. If, previously, you had:

PATH=C:\DOS;C:\WINDOWS;C:\FOO;C:\BAR;C:\XYZZY

then after the 'PATH=C:\DJGPP;%PATH%' it would look like this:

PATH=C:\DJGPP;C:\DOS;C:\WINDOWS;C:\FOO;C:\BAR;C:\XYZZY

late\fw

-- 
[- 				 firewind	                            -]
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