MIKE ROSS wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 MR> "Roy J. Tellason" bravely wrote to "Charles
Angelich" (06 Oct 03 
 MR> 20:01:27)  --- on the heady topic of "dos question"

 RJT> I have a bit of a problem with a batch file I use for the bbs.  What
 RJT> it does is,  it invokes the files list generator,  and then takes the
 RJT> results and zips things up.  Repeatedly.  Sorta like this:
 MR> [,,,]
 RJT> pkzip -m F:\Max\File\Text\Tans_Txt Tans_Txt.Lst
 RJT> pkzip -m F:\Max\File\Text\New_Txt Tans_Txt.New

 MR> I think that I've encountered problems with pkzip having to do with
 MR> the depth of the path and/or the use of the underscore _ character
 MR> in the path names (not a problem if in file names). 

What bothers me is that this is something that worked,  and then stopped working...

 MR> Another problem may be if invoking pkzip actually starts a batch 
 MR> file called pkzip.bat instead of the program itself. The program 
 MR> then behaves slightly differently in a few rare cases I've 
 MR> experienced.

I don't know why anybody would do that,  name a batch file like that...

 MR> Try to preceed the pkzip with the path as much as possible just in 
 MR> case.

It's in there,  as you can see in the lines quoted above.

 MR> The other issue is as Charles mentioned having to do with the use
 MR> of memory. Remember that pkzip also requires disk space in the root
 MR> work drive unless you specifically tell it to use another location.
 MR> I think it might have the error you reported if it runs out of disk
 MR> space in the work drive.

I think that perhaps this is another instance of stuff in executable
program files somehow getting corrupted.  One other program that I'd had a
problem with in the past turned out to show up in "bad sectors"
when I went through that nonsense with the drives the past couple of days.

And there was one other instance,  I can't recall just what at the moment, 
where some executable file was giving me truly bizarre behavior.  Replacing
it with a fresh copy made the problem go away.

In the case of this stuff,  I was able to do the segments of the batch file
manually,  using DV's mark-and-transfer functions (essentially
cut-and-paste). In terms of the various segments,  the only one that
wouldn't fly is the OS/2 segment,  this afternoon.  So later on I tried
replacing the exe with a fresh copy,  and that segment went fine.  I'm
going to have to give the whole pile a test tomorrow before I cut it loose
in the maintenance code again,  though...

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