OS.system under Windows: The never-ending story?

[Denys Duchier]

kornstae at ps.uni-sb.de (Leif Kornstaedt) writes:

> 1. Under Windows 98, the `system' function does not
>    seem to work properly either, as Denys reports.
>    Apparently it works the first time, but when called
>    a second time with the same command, it fails with
>    `Bad command or file name'.  Should we provide our
>    own custom implementation for Windows 9x as well?

This happens e.g. when invoked from a shell under Emacs, but not when
invoked directly from the DOS shell.  It may also happen when invoked
from the cygwin shell... I don't quite remember the error reports I
had in the mail (I don't have access to Win95/98 - so, again, all
debugging occured through email)

> 2. Why do we build a path to cmd.exe ourselves instead
>    of using COMSPEC?  I believe we should be using
>    COMSPEC, as this is how `system' is defined (it
>    uses the shell specified by the user).

On Win95/98, it was reported to me that using the full path to
COMMAND.COM as specified by COMSPEC does not work when passed to
OS.system.  We don't know why.  Just passing COMMAND.COM, however,
works.

Cheers,

-- 
Dr. Denys Duchier			Denys.Duchier at ps.uni-sb.de
Forschungsbereich Programmiersysteme	(Programming Systems Lab)
Universitaet des Saarlandes, Geb. 45	http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier
Postfach 15 11 50			Phone: +49 681 302 5618
66041 Saarbruecken, Germany		Fax:   +49 681 302 5615
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