Re: lynx-dev Command-line options and DOS [patch]

[Doug Kaufman]

On Thu, 5 Aug 1999, Klaus Peter Wegge wrote:

> > 4. The ":" is already used as a separator for options in lynx.cfg
> Sorry, but I don't understand this discussion.
> In one of my dos batch files (DOS 6.22) I have a line like:
> c:\lynx -auth=abc:xyz
> I don't have a problem with the "=" in the DOS batch file.
> Where is the problem exactly?

The problem is with options that don't _require_ an argument, and
which may be _optionally_ given an argument, such as -show_cursor
(which may optionally have arguments "on" "off" "+" or "-". When the
"=" is missing, the next argument is taken as the startfile. The
option that you give, -auth, accepts whitespace between it and its
argument. I think that with your batch file, what is actually passed
to lynx is:
"c:\lynx -auth abc:xyz".
You should be able to test this by turning echo on in the batch file.

> Additionally this example shows an curious variant:
> c:\lynx -auth:abc:xyz

It gets parsed at the first ":". Also acceptable would be:
"-cfg:c:/lynx/lynx.cfg"
 
> 
> But there is another problem in DOS.
> The length of a commandline is restricted to 128 characters.
> For this reason we should consider an option like
> -file=optionfilename
> which enables lynx to read options from an seperate file.

I think we already have this. It is the "-cfg" option. There are only
a few options which must be given at the command line, instead of in
lynx.cfg. The command line buffer limit of DOS should not normally be
a problem.

                          Doug
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Doug Kaufman
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