DOS window.

[Richard S Beckett]

Guys,

I've been writing perl scripts at work on a w2k machine, but as I'm now
doing a personal project, I thought I'd better do it at home.

For various reasons, I'm still running w98 at home, and have discovered that
the w98 dos window is particularly crap, as I can't specify a buffer size.

If I put cmd.exe from my w2k machine onto the w98 machine, will it run OK,
and give me the dos window I'm used to, or is this a bad idea?

Are there any better ways around this?

Thanks.

 

[Ben Morrow]

For various reasons, I'm still running w98 at home, and have discovered that
the w98 dos window is particularly crap, as I can't specify a buffer size.

If I put cmd.exe from my w2k machine onto the w98 machine, will it run OK,
and give me the dos window I'm used to, or is this a bad idea?

I would have thought it would fail, without having tried it. Win2k
'DOS' is in fact nothing of the sort, it is a somewhat better shell.

Are there any better ways around this?

I would probably install MSYS from http://mingw.org/msys.shtml.

You realise this has nothing to do with Perl...

Ben

 

[Richard S Beckett]

I would probably install MSYS from http://mingw.org/msys.shtml.

You realise this has nothing to do with Perl...

What do you mean it has nothing to do with perl!!?

What else would you use a DOS window for? ;-)

 

[Richard S Beckett]

I _think_ that it'll fail, for the simple reason that Windows 98 is a GUI

sitting on top of a shell, and Win 2000 is a native 32-bit OS.

The above might not make sense, but in short, if you run 'command.com' on a
Windows 98 machine, you're getting rid of the GUI (after a fashion), and
accessing what is running _behind_ it, whereas 'cmd.exe' on Windows 2000
_spawns_ a shell _from_ the OS.

Erm ... did the above make sense ?

Not at all! ;-)

 

[Ben Morrow]

The above might not make sense, but in short, if you run 'command.com' on a
Windows 98 machine, you're getting rid of the GUI (after a fashion), and
accessing what is running _behind_ it, whereas 'cmd.exe' on Windows 2000
_spawns_ a shell _from_ the OS.

Erm ... did the above make sense ?

Not entirely...

It's also wrong. You are running an instance of command.com quite
separate from that which underlies Win98. If Windows supported proper
process trees, it would look like this:

command.com
|
\ win.com
|
\ WINOLDAP, whatever that is
|
\ command.com

Ben

 

[Ben Morrow]

What do you mean it has nothing to do with perl!!?

What else would you use a DOS window for? ;-)

I believe the correct response at this point is either 'fdisk c:/' or
'loadlin', but that's another question entirely...

Ben

 

[Malcolm Dew-Jones]

Richard S Beckett ([email protected]) wrote:
: Guys,

: I've been writing perl scripts at work on a w2k machine, but as I'm now
: doing a personal project, I thought I'd better do it at home.

: For various reasons, I'm still running w98 at home, and have discovered that
: the w98 dos window is particularly crap, as I can't specify a buffer size.

: If I put cmd.exe from my w2k machine onto the w98 machine, will it run OK,

no

: and give me the dos window I'm used to, or is this a bad idea?

fine idea, it just won't work

: Are there any better ways around this?

Might I suggest linux? You don't have to reformat your hard drive if you
get an install that uses the dos format.

You know of course that you can control the number of lines in the
window, I think you can get at least 55 lines, and I know for 100%
certainty you can get 43 cause that's ega mode.

People used to use emacs as a programming front end to solve the
limitations of terminals, so perhaps emacs could do the same for you.

I wonder if any of the various command.com replacements (4dos is one
example) provide their own improvements on the dos box window.

Otherwise, pipe all output into temporary files and use your favourite
editor to examine the output.

I often use notepad as a "scratch pad" for my input on windows. I format
more complex commands in a notepad window (always saved in a file called
notes.txt in the directory of the project) and then cut and paste the
commands to run them. The file ends up being a good document of my test
cases, so I gain something even though the use of the file is gludgy.

$0.2

 

[Sisyphus]

Guys,

I've been writing perl scripts at work on a w2k machine, but as I'm now
doing a personal project, I thought I'd better do it at home.

Only if a) you think you might get caught, or b) you're self-employed.

For various reasons, I'm still running w98 at home, and have discovered that
the w98 dos window is particularly crap, as I can't specify a buffer size.

If I put cmd.exe from my w2k machine onto the w98 machine, will it run OK,
and give me the dos window I'm used to, or is this a bad idea?

I did that once - iirc it ran fine but didn't provide the full cmd.exe
functionality. I'm no longer sure of the details. Give it a try and see
what happens.

MSYS (as already mentioned), Cygwin bash, and 4DOS (which is not free)
are 3 alternatives that come to mind .... in so far as "if they don't
provide what you're after, then it aint available".

Cheers,
Rob

 

[Richard S Beckett]

Oh well. It does work differently from anything else I'm used to, maybe it's
because it's still a FE of W98. I do have a SE somewhere, but I was waiting
until it broke before I installed that.

It's a shame that microsoft not supporting their own hardware in later
windows versions is actually stopping me from upgrading. In fact it's
incredible, because the hardware is so robust, I think it might last
forever! ;-)

Thanks Guys.

 

[Ben Morrow]

It's a shame that microsoft not supporting their own hardware

Err.. I don't think Microsoft are a hardware company...

Ben

 

[Chris Mattern]

Err.. I don't think Microsoft are a hardware company...

<Looks at Microsoft mouse>

<Looks at Microsoft keyboard>

<Looks at Microsoft joystick>

They aren't?

Chris Mattern

 

[Bill]

Guys,

I've been writing perl scripts at work on a w2k machine, but as I'm now
doing a personal project, I thought I'd better do it at home.

For various reasons, I'm still running w98 at home, and have discovered that
the w98 dos window is particularly crap, as I can't specify a buffer size.

If I put cmd.exe from my w2k machine onto the w98 machine, will it run OK,
and give me the dos window I'm used to, or is this a bad idea?

Are there any better ways around this?

Several code editors will spawn a scrolling command line interface,
basically command.com with pipes to an editor page. I think maybe
there is an emacs port to win95 that does this but am not sure about
that--I think I saw this years ago.

 

[John W. Krahn]

<Looks at Microsoft mouse>

<Looks at Microsoft keyboard>

<Looks at Microsoft joystick>

They aren't?

Don't forget your XBox.


John