Running the Command Shell

If you want to run a shell command, such as “type”, or “dir”, or you want to run a batch file, then you have to run cmd.exe first. For example,

cmd /c mybat.bat  or
cmd /c type foo.txt

Note: If you are using Windows 9x/Me, you should use command.com instead of cmd.exe.

If the Run string contains more than one command, separated by semi-colons, you don’t need to run cmd.exe because Source Insight creates a batch file from the run string commands and runs command.com automatically in that case. For example,

cat readme.txt;dir

This works fine because it is already running in a batch file inside a shell.

You may find that the shell you spawned by cmd.exe does not have enough environment space. If that happens, use the /e switch with cmd.exe. For example,

cmd /e:1024 /c mybat.bat

This allocates 1K bytes of environment space to the new sub shell spawned by command.com.