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- DOS Environment Edit, copyright 1987 by Bill Mayne.
- (May be copied and used freely by individuals but not published or sold.)
-
- Files included:
-
- ENVED.BAT - modify for your own editor
- $ENVED.BAT - BASICA or GWBASIC
- $ENVED.C - Microsoft C, version 4.0
- $ENVED.EXE - Executable file produced by MSC.
- $ENVED.PAS - Turbo Pascal (.COM file omitted to save space)
-
- This archive contains some programs and batch files to help edit the DOS
- environment. The idea for this came from two sources. First my own
- desire to make changes to the environment for testing or other reasons
- in a more convenient way than manually using the SET command. The PATH
- and PROMPT values tend to be rather long, and I always thought it was a
- shame that I had to retype the whole string to make one change, such as
- adding another directory to the PATH. Second I saw a public domain
- program which allowed editting the environment, but because it tried to
- do everything itself (with a little necessary help from batch files) it
- had some limitations. In any case I would rather have the choice of
- using a full blown commercial text editor which is much better than
- anything I or anyone else could write without a major programming
- effort.
-
- ENVED.BAT controls the process. The steps are:
-
- (1) Execute a SET command, redirecting the output to a temporary data
- file named "\$ENVED.DAT". This could be in any directory and on any
- drive. If you have a RAM disk put it there. It is deleted later.
-
- (2) Edit the temporary data file using the editor of choice. I use
- KEDIT by Mansfield Software. The only requirement is that it be a
- straight ASCII edit. If you use a word processor it must be in
- nondocument mode.
-
- (3) Convert the .DAT file to "\$ENVED$.BAT" using a program named
- "$ENVED". Three version are provided, using BASIC, Microsoft C, and
- Turbo Pascal. The BASIC program has the names of the .DAT and .BAT
- files hard coded in the first two lines. The C and Pascal versions
- use standard input and output, with redirection provided by the
- $ENVED.BAT. Comments in the source code give more information.
-
- (4) Execute $ENVED$.BAT.
-
- I wrote this in three languages so users can tinker with it. I like the
- C version best, since it uses just a stand alone .EXE file. Anyone can
- modify the BASIC version, and it takes less space on the disk. The
- archive includes $ENVED.EXE, produced from the C program. The Turbo
- Pascal .COM file is not included since it is functionally equivalent but
- more than twice as big (12190 bytes for TP versus 5224 for MSC). Pascal
- source code is of interest only to folks who have Turbo Pascal, and they
- can compile their own.