EXPANDING THE DOS ENVIRONMENT

The DOS environment is an area in memory where DOS keeps track of
various information, including prompts, path statements, and the
COMSPEC (COMSPEC tells DOS where to find Command.com when it needs
to be re-loaded into memory).  This space can also be used to store
user-defined variables using the SET command.

The default environment size is as follows:

  DOS 3.1 & 3.2 - 128 bytes
  DOS 3.3       - 168 bytes

To Increase the size, add the following line to your CONFIG.SYS
file:

  SHELL=d:\path\COMMAND.COM /E:size  /P


Where:

  d:\path\COMMAND.COM  is the location & name of the command
                       interpreter
  /P                   ensures that COMMAND.COM stays loaded
  /E:size              is the size of the environment

The size is equal to:

   DOS 3.1 - The number of bytes you want divided by 16 and rounded
             up.
   DOS 3.2 & UP - The number of bytes you want, 32K maximum.

For example, the following line in your CONFIG.SYS file for DOS
3.3:

   SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM /E:1024 /P

Would expand the environment from the default of 168 bytes to 1024
bytes.

Uploaded by:

  Patrick H. Corrigan
  The Corrigan Group
  75170,146
  3/9/90