DOS Environment Forced To 512 Byte Size - Not

DocumentID: 652248
Revision Date: 29-Feb-96 8:29:14 PM

The information in this document applies to:
WordPerfect® 5.1 for DOS

Problem

Symptoms: The customer forces the DOS environment to allow 512 bytes in size by using the SHELL=COMMAND.COM/E: 512/P command. When the customer shells out of WordPerfect 5.1, the DOS environment is only a couple of bytes bigger than the information in the environment (whatever displays when you type "SET"). The customer claims they need a larger DOS environment for running certain third party programs. Solutions: The problem the customer is experiencing is the way that DOS functions and not a problem with WordPerfect. When shelling out of most programs, COMSPEC is called, which produces another copy of COMMAND.COM. This copy is taken from the current command environment. The current command environment means what is in the DOS environment at that time, but not the space allocated to the environment. In other words, just the environment space used at the time, rounded up to the nearest memory block size. For example, if the environment is set to "/E:512" and 250K of this space is being used when shelling out, DOS takes a copy of that 250K and expands it to the nearest memory block which would be 256K. The environment would be 256K with 6K available. Then, when exiting back to WordPerfect, the new copy of COMMAND.COM is exited and the original COMMAND.COM is returned. So, the system would be back to the 512K environment with 262K available.

Answer:

Details:

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