Back to DOS

Well I just finished school and jumped into a little program.

Our Image Update to our recently released Image is required to be loaded onto the Image before it boots into the mini-setup of sysprep. The problem is that the Wise Packaging team uses long file names. By long I just mean more than eight characters. Well we found a DOS app which would allow to show both Long File Names and the Standard 8.3 format. So then we though we were in the clear.

Nope, the Firm command uses the 8.3 format when it recurses through the CD. The problem is that it doesn't expand those names to Long format on the destination drive. Therefore our Image Update will fail.

Well now I have created a DOS program in C++ to handle this. It is a bit silly how I did it, but it works.

Basically you have to run a Dir /s on the Root folder that you want to Firm into the destination drive. This command gives a recursive directory output. So you will see every directory expanded to show all the files. Export this data to text file. Now I call my program with:

DirConv "Dir /s Ouput" "Output BAT File"

The program will take this input and process it line by line and export the correct Firm command. The firm command will be

Firm Copy "Drive Letter":\"Short Path"\"Short File Name" "PROD:\"Long Path"\"Long File Name"

I'll be testing it tomorrow.