new DOSMerge

[Tom Neff]

In article <8886 at chinet.chi.il.us> les at chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
>In article <14439 at bfmny0.UUCP> tneff at bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes:
>
>>>You can run any DOS program from a UNIX makefile, but you cannot run the
>>>make in the background or redirect output of the make (VP/IX needs a console).
>
>>I redirect VP/ix output all the time. 
>
>Just to be perverse, I logged in to a 386 running AT&T unix over a starlan
>network, started an interactive shell in GNU emacs and ran some DOS commands.

Is any of this actually redirection?  Or is it just a particular choice
of terminal.  Redirection to me means piping to files and processes within
the shell.

>They mostly worked, except for the CR's at the ends of lines, which can be
>fixed by loading the kermit library and setting kermit-clean-on.  I couldn't
>quite get an interactive command.com to work.  Even with kermit-default-cr
>it seemed to lose most of the input characters.  

With CU(1) and EMACS running their greasy hands over everything going in
and out of your DOS session, character loss seems possible.  It's important
to make sure you have the right terminal type.  VP/ix uses curses/terminfo
to translate stuff from the virtual PC screen onto your actual terminal
screen, if you're not on the AT386 console display.  If a program stores
an "X" into text memory, it gets translated to the whole escape sequence
necessary to move your terminal's cursor to the matching place and write
an X.  Wonderful concept, but sometimes it can bog down.

>>You only need DOSPATH if you want to be able to fire off EXE/COM/BAT
>>files from the shell prompt as if they were UNIX commands....

>I see a real problem with the reverse effect (i.e. under DOS executing
>a unix command by typing its name).  If you happen to have your DOS
>current drive set to something that unix doesn't understand (like
>the floppy or a dos partition of the HD) the unix command will execute
>in the directory where you started the dos process.  For example, you
>might start dos from your home directory, change to the A: drive and
>accidentally type rm * to delete everything instead of del *.*.  Guess
>what gets erased...

I can confirm this dumb behavior.  The little charmer known as "rununix",
to which lots of things like "cat.com" and "ls.com" are linked, has
its problems.  One of the ways I can crash my box HARD with VP/ix is

	dos -c "ls.com -l" | cat

Boom.

In general I find very few UNIX programs I want that badly to run
under DOS.  Especially with the virtual terminal facility, I can just
flip to the next page and do it there.
-- 
"My God, Thiokol, when do you     \\	Tom Neff
want me to launch -- next April?"  \\	uunet!bfmny0!tneff