MSDOS PATH setting and overlay files

[Brent Williams]

in article <3130001 at hplsla.HP.COM>, davidr at hplsla.HP.COM (      David Reed) says:
> 
> I downloaded a program called SEARCH from a bulletin board (I have seen it on
> several), which is what I think you want.  It is used much like path, but it
> intercepts file requests first, and searches its path set to look for the
> requested file (and if unsuccessful, then lets the DOS PATH look for the
> file).  It works even for data files, overlays, documents; literaly any file.
> 
> BEWARE: the file it gets may not be the one you really want.  If, for example
> you want to edit a file, if more than one file exists with the same name, you
> may end up editing the wrong one (and I understand it can get confused in
> saving it properly).

A major bug in SEARCH:

I downloaded it for the sole purpose of getting WordStar to work on
subdirectories, so that it could pick up the two overlay files in my old
creaky version.  Because of this, I did not attempt to use it for anything 
else.

I finally got rid of SEARCH when I got  the Microsoft C 4.0 compiler.  When I 
fired up the compiler to run the simple example program, the compiler
printed an error message (the program didn't have any errors in it) and went
nuts, printing blanks until I turned off the computer.  My first thought was
to follow the instructions in installing the compiler :-) so I deleted
everything and started over.  No luck.  I thought about it for a while 
and tried fixing all the parameters with config.sys I could conceive of.
I thought maybe the environment variable space (which I had patched to 1Kbytes)
was getting hosed -- chopped out my environment variables unrelated to MSC
and cut back to normal.  No luck. 

I sent the distribution disks to microsoft claiming they were defective.  They
sent me a new set, which I installed according to the instructions.  Still
bombed.

After 2 more days of cursing, tearing hair, and hiding under my desk, I
finally figured out that SEARCH was blowing the compiler out.  After 
removing it from my autoexec.bat file the compiler worked just ducky
from there on. 

I hope this saves someone from perdition.

-Brent Williams
 Relational Technology, Inc.
 1080 Marina Village Parkway
 Alameda, CA   94501
 415-769-1400

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