Andy,

Sorry for the delay.. Holidays.

I started using the ".bat" file work-around to solve a problem in real time and was un-willing to change an on-going development environment to solve such a small problem.

I use scripted tools a lot and the ".bat" work-around was just another symptom of that disease.

I also find the work-around useful as i stil have a lot of tools that are DOS based not yet replaced by WIN tools of equal speed, accuracy or (perhaps perceived) suitability. This won't be the case forever and so i must admit that finally there is no good excuse.

We have discussed in the past using informative lexical conventions and this can (although not always) drive you to exceed the of DEC derived convention of 8.3 filespec. So, "long filename" capability (which unlike a lot of OS which i've used is still a relatively new feature) is a very attractive and useful capability.

regards,
p