On at 2025-05-03 17:43 -0400, Roger via Freedos-user wrote:
Not sure if this email was sent out, regardless mutt says it was
post-poned:

FYI: "\n" are characters within C programming language, symbolizing the newline 
character in C character and string literals.

Almost looks like a poorly coded program tried line interpreting the text file 
once.  Whether from Unix to DOS, vice versa or just interpreting within DOS, 
shrugs.

Simply remove the "\n" characters within a text editor and substitute with real 
line endings. (eg. return/enter key press)

You did it. You (all) annoyed me enough to reply to this thread!

Let's review the beginning of the dump of the batch file in Alex's mail from 2025-03-20 19:55 +0100:

@echo off 1)GIGARAID\n 2)Si3114 BASE Driver\n 3)Si3114 RAID Driver\n 4)VIA 6410 
RAID\n 5)Promise 20779 SATA Driver\n 6)Promise 20779 SATA RAID Driver \n 
7)Intel Matrix Storage Manager 32 bit \n 8)Intel Matrix Storage Manager 64 bit 
\n 9)Si3132 BASE (32 Bit) Driver \n A)Si3132 BASE (64 Bit) Driver \n B)Si3132 
RAID (32 Bit) Driver \n C)Si3132 RAID (64 Bit) Driver \n D)iTE 8211 Driver \n 
E)GIGABYTE SATA-RAID Driver 32Bit \n F)GIGABYTE SATA-RAID Driver 64Bit \n 
G)Intel Matrix Storage Manager 32 bit(Only ICH8R/Win2k) \n 0)exit\n

if %1==1 goto 1
if %1==2 goto 2
if %1==3 goto 3
if %1==4 goto 4
if %1==5 goto 5
[etc]

What happens if you "fix" the supposedly wrong "\n" sequences that, as you write, should be "substitute[d] with real line endings":

> @echo off 1)GIGARAID
> 2)Si3114 BASE Driver
> 3)Si3114 RAID Driver
> 4)VIA 6410 RAID
> 5)Promise 20779 SATA Driver
> 6)Promise 20779 SATA RAID Driver
> 7)Intel Matrix Storage Manager 32 bit
> 8)Intel Matrix Storage Manager 64 bit
> 9)Si3132 BASE (32 Bit) Driver
[etc]

Now on what planet are these lines valid 86-DOS batch script commands? Not on this one, I'd claim!

What I think is happening: The first line is actually some sort of Meta data used by a tool other than the DOS shell. The "echo off" is what is actually meant to be executed by command.com and the appended list of options is used by the other tool.

However, trying with the command shells of lMS-DOS (based on MS-DOS v4.01), FreeDOS (FreeCOM), and MS-DOS v7.10 none of them behave the way I would expect based on this quoted text line (if, indeed, it is accurate):

lMS-DOS: Entire line is displayed, starting with "off 1)GIGARAID\n 2)...", echo status is still on afterwards.

FreeCOM: Same as lMS-DOS, except no empty lines or commands displayed.

MS-DOS v7.10: Only the word "OFF" is displayed (in allcaps), echo status is still on afterwards.

So in conclusion: I don't know exactly what this is meant as, but I am fairly sure that just "substituting" real linebreaks for the "\n" sequences doesn't seem to be useful either.

Regards,
ecm


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