Date: Thu, 3 Mar 1994 12:13:33 -0500
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
From: gerstel AT underground DOT irhe DOT upenn DOT edu (Brian Gerstel)
Subject: Re: gcc output...

>This brings up a question I was going to ask about anyhow ... Is there
>any problem using djgpp with 4DOS?  What about memory requirements?  Is
>4DOS a good drop-in replacement for COMMAND.COM (It wouldn't take much...)
>What about compatibility with existing DOS batch files?  Programs that
>spawn a shell?  Anything else...

I've been using 4DOS for about a year now, and I can't imagine getting
along without it.  Besides letting you redirect stderr, it also allows much
longer command lines, lets you define aliases, has much better shell
programming, and can load all but 4k of itself in EMS/XMS (and all but 256
bytes of that 4k in UMBs).  It should *work* as a drop-in, but you'll need
to do some configuration to get the best milage.

And there's one *neat* feature that fits in with djgpp's current COFF
output.  You can associate an extension with a program, so I named all my
djgpp-compiled programs "*.g32", added ".G32=go32" to my environment...and
suddenly, no more 1-line batch files, no stub adding/editing, etc.

"You have bad taste in movies."     |Brian Gerstel
"No, I like movies that are in      |The Institute for Research on Higher
 bad taste."                        |Education - University of Pennsylvania
                "Love and Curses"   |gerstel AT underground DOT irhe DOT upenn DOT edu