Sender: ml AT delorie DOT com
Message-ID: <33C11694.52F5C327@cdata.tvnet.hu>
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 1997 18:17:24 +0200
From: Molnar Laszlo <molnarl AT cdata DOT tvnet DOT hu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: DJGPP workers <djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: bug in system()
References: <Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 970707185426 DOT 11286C-100000 AT is>
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Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 7 Jul 1997, Molnar Laszlo wrote:
> 
> >   if (!shell)
> >     shell = command_com;
> >
> > like in _shell_command(), because _is_unixy_shell() can receive
> > a NULL pointer which list_member() will dereference, if there is no
> > SHELL or COMSPEC environment variable (this is the case in a perl
> > test script).
> 
> Please explain how did you get into a situation where there's no COMSPEC.
> AFAIK, it should be always defined on MS-DOS.  If I'm right, comspec is
> never a NULL pointer.

I was surprised too. So this perl script tries to test the environment
handling, and in one of its subtest it deletes the whole environment and
tries to call a djgpp program (echo.exe I think). But at that moment,
there is no COMPSPEC :(