ID Number: Q69803
4.00 4.01
MS-DOS
Summary:
According to page 1428 in the "MS-DOS Encyclopedia" (Microsoft Press),
when submitting files to the PRINT.COM spooler terminate-and-stay-resident
(TSR) program via the INT 2F interface it is required that the name of
the file be a fully qualified pathname. Submitting a partial pathname
can cause the spooler to hang.
More Information:
The MS-DOS Print command consists of two sections; the transient
portion and the resident portion. The resident code installs itself
into memory and attaches to the timer so that it can feed data out the
printer port. The transient portion handles the parsing of the command
line and processing the submission of files to the resident portion,
and then is removed from memory.
The Print command's transient portion processes the filenames offered
on the command line for submission to ensure that they are well-formed
pathnames. Once the pathname has been verified, the transient portion
of the Print command will submit the fully qualified pathname to the
resident portion.
The resident portion also offers an interface for print job submission
that is independent of the Print command's transient code. This
interface allows application programs to submit a print job directly.
When using this interface, the pathname for the submitted file MUST be
formed properly, and the file MUST exist. The resident portion of the
Print command does no checking for invalid filenames. The file
handling code within the spooler assumes that the filename is correct,
and if it is not, it may hang the system.