Subject: Problem with DOS Pico

From: Moshe Segal <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 20:19:22 -0400

In an attempt to use Pico instead of the MSDOS editor, I encountered a 
problem.  I made sure Pico.exe was in my path; I have it in my \dos 
directory.  I tried it, using the -w switch, to edit Autoexec.bat.  It 
had no problem bringing up the file and allowing me to edit it.  But when 
it came time to quit, after saving the buffer, I got a message: "cannot 
open file for writing.  With some experimentation, I discovered that it 
will write to a file if it is in the same directory as pico.exe, but not 
otherwise.  Is there a switch or environment variable that can rectify this?

Do not look at the flask			Moshe E. Segal
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From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 09:43:56 -0400

On Thu, 12 Oct 1995, Moshe Segal wrote:

> problem. [...] I tried it, using the -w switch, to edit Autoexec.bat.  
> [...] 

    Did your autoexec.bat file have the read-only attribute set?  I keep 
mine read-only to help avoid accidental deletion.  That might explain 
your problem.

Paul
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Paul O. Bartlett         <[email-masked]>
P. O. Box 857     Vienna, VA 22183-0857     U.S.A.
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From: Moshe Segal <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 23:23:48 -0400

> mine read-only to help avoid accidental deletion.  That might explain 

No, that's not the problem.  I am constantly modifying my startup files, 
or having them added to by newly installed programs.  I just back them up 
perodically under a different name, in a different directory.  The 
problem is definitely Pico-Related.  Any other text editors work, and if 
I moved Pico to the root, I would not have a problem with Attoexec.bat 
and Config.sys, but would not be able to write to a file in another 
directory.  I guess one not-so desirable solution would be to copy the 
program to every directory that has ASCII text files.