On Sun, Jan 9, 2022 at 1:19 PM tom ehlert <t...@drivesnapshot.de> wrote: > > > > As everyone knows and the docs clearly state, everything after a REM is > > ignored. > > > However, I recently noticed an issue with a batch file that had something > > like: > > > REM this thing [[x|4]] or later > > > in one of its remarks. Every time the batch was executed, it > > displayed a “4]]” command not found error. > > > Out of curiosity, I checked under MS-DOS 6.22. It exhibited the > > same behavior. I have a vague recollection of noticing this decades ago as > > well. > > > It is a bug. But, it’s a bug that MS-DOS has as well. > > > What’s you opinion? Should FreeCOM replicate this “feature” or fix the bug? > > > IMO that's a parsing problem. > > is it > (1) REM WHATEVER > or > (2) command | command > > and even if *you* think this is a bug, by definition what MSDOS 6.22 > does is the definition of how to implement stuff (unless it's a really > obvious bug which I don't see here). > > so it's more of a feature, then a bug. >
I have a paper copy of a few original MS-DOS manuals. My MS-DOS 4 manual says the only separators allowed in a comment are whitespace but didn't mention redirection. But the MS-DOS 5 manual specifically says *not* to use redirection in REM. So this was a known issue in MS-DOS. It was later fixed in the Windows CMD prompt, but the feature exists in MS-DOS COMMAND. And I think it's important to meet the features of MS-DOS. And it's a weird one, because one would think that REM would ignore the *rest* of the line, like any comment. And that was probably the intent, but that's not how it was implemented. Instead, you get MS-DOS behavior like this: REM > file.txt ..and then you get a zero-length FILE.TXT. So I think the feature should stay as-is in FreeDOS. We implemented this just like MS-DOS did. And that's good. Jim _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
