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A-Shell Consolidated Reference

(MBF_CMDLIN) When launching a Windows command line (unrelated to A-Shell, such as the Windows calculator), it is often problematic to know the fully qualified path. If the command cannot be assumed to be in the default PATH (like NOTEPAD or CALCULATOR) or in the Registry (typical for newer installations of Office applications), then you will probably have to use an environment variable and insist that it be defined. For example, you might put your utilities in an arbitrary folder but require as part of the installation procedure that an environment variable, say, ASHUTIL, be defined, then you can specify it in your command lines (e.g. "%ASHUTIL%\MYUTIL.EXE"). Or you can just require that the PATH environment variable be extended to include the directory where your special utilities are found.

Another idea would be to install any such custom utilities in a directory with a known relation to the DSKn directories. Then you can refer to it using relative notation, e.g. "..\..\ashutils\myutil.exe." This would assume that the "ashutils" folder as a sibling to the DSKn folders.

If you are using the command line to launch another instance of A-Shell, as with XCALL HOSTEX, you can refer to the current A-Shell executable (and its current miame.ini) via the macro symbol $ASHELL, and you can use the suffix characters available to HOSTEX. For example, "$ASHELL –e run armenu $" would launch a new A-Shell instance, run the program armenu, and suspend the current session until armenu exited.