Subject: A new more MS-DOS-compatible Command.com
From: "John Arington" <cen_prog@centroidcnc.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 13:00:42 -0500
To: <jhall@freedos.org>

Hello Jim,
 
We wrote a *new* public domain COMMAND.COM and would like to
share it with the FreeDos community.  We want to make the source available to
anyone who wants to develop it further.  This work, however, is independent
of the FreeCom project.  However, you and many others may be asking
"why?".  Well, the rationale is..... compatibility with MS-DOS.
 
We are an industrial controls company that have seen the value of Freedos,
and we plan to distribute at least the kernel as the OS part of our product
(of course, paying careful attention to the GNU GPL).  However, we have
a problem with the current FREECOM's incompatibility with batch files written
for MS-DOS's COMMAND.COM.  We already have quite a few batch files
shipping with our products that rely on the little intricacies of MS-DOS's
COMMAND.COM.  For example: Under MS-DOS, you can type "CD\SOMEDIR"
and MS-DOS's COMMAND.COM will happily change to the \SOMEDIR directory.
Not so with FREECOM.  Under FREECOM, you have to put a space between
CD and \SOMEDIR.  It's small details like these that make FREECOM choke on
our batch files.  Not to mention IF statements .....
 
Anyway, the source is available to anyone who wants to develop this further. 
 
Thanks for reading this.
P.S.  The program is compiled under DJGPP and requires CWSDPMI.EXE to run.
 
