Remember and Recall Directory Path?

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Clueless in Seattle
Posts: 47
Joined: 01 Jul 2011 13:37

Remember and Recall Directory Path?

#1 Post by Clueless in Seattle » 10 Mar 2013 17:56

I want to make a batch file in MS-DOS 6.21 that remembers the current logged drive and directory (What do you call that anyway. It's not the "path" is it?) and then re-log me back onto that drive and directory later on.

It was easy for me to simply redirect the output of the CD command to a textfile named U_R_HERE.TXT like this:

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CD>e:\temp\U_R_HERE.TXT


But I'm having trouble figuring out how to tell MS-DOS 6.21 to log back into that drive and directory later on.

I tried this, but it didn't work:

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CD <e:\temp\U_R_HERE.TXT


Any ideas?
----
Will in Seattle
a.k.a. "Clueless"

Queue
Posts: 31
Joined: 16 Feb 2013 14:31

Re: Remember and Recall Directory Path?

#2 Post by Queue » 10 Mar 2013 19:11

Digging through some old Win9x batch files I have, I adapted a line that MIGHT work for you.

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echo exit|%COMSPEC% /K prompt CD $P$_|find " " > recall.bat


To restore your location, you'd use:

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call recall.bat


What it's actually doing is starting a new instance of command.com, changing the prompt to ''CD CURRENT_PATH NEWLINE", echoing an exit command to that new command.com, and parsing the new command.com's output with find to write out a file that contains the command:
CD CURRENT_PATH

Obviously you can change the output to go to a file in a folder of your choosing.

This was adapted from an old batch to generate a %CD% environment variable, and honestly, I'm sure it could be improved, but I didn't want to tweak it too much as I'm sitting at an XP computer and am not positive I wouldn't mess things up.

Also, this was for a batch file for an older version of Windows that still used command.com, so while I expect it to work under just DOS, I'm not certain.

Good luck!

Queue

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