Backticks cause Win98 to crash?

[obscurifer]

I needed to run the Windows 98 EXTRACT utility over all of the Windows 98 distribution cabfiles so I could find a particular file inside the cabs. I wrote a script that captured the filename of all of the cabs on the Windows 98SE CD and used the backtick operator to launch EXTRACT on each filename.

I consistently caused Windows to bluescreen. When I ran the same program on WinNT 4, I got no errors, but I had forgotten something so I got no output. I fixed my output problem on WinNT, and my program worked.

So, my question... Has anyone else seen Perl's backtick operator cause Windows 98 to crash and burn? If so, were you able to fix the problem? Please note that I got the same problem in Win98 with both the ActiveState Perl and the Cygwin Perl.

Below is the final version of the program. O: is my CD, and the C:\temp directory does exist.

========
open OUTFILE, ">>c:/temp/cablistings.txt" or die "can't open output: $!";

while(defined($filename = glob("o:/win98/*cab&quot)) {
$thefile = join '\\', split(/\//,$filename);
$outputstring = `o:\\win98\\extract.exe /D $thefile`;
print OUTFILE $outputstring;
print "$thefile\n";
}

close OUTFILE;

========

 

[cobes]

Hey Ob;

If you know the name of the Win98 .cab file you are looking for specifically, you might want to download Power Toys. If I'm not mistaken, I think I recall seeing a utility in there that lets you OPEN and "VIEW" .cab files without running or installing them...

Hope this helps... Take Care.
Cobes

 

[obscurifer]

Thanks, cobes, for the information.

The reason I needed to look inside cab files is no longer an issue, but I'm still curious to find out if other folks have made Win98 crash and burn. Am I not catching an error condition or something? I'd like to be able to automate some tasks on my Win98 machine, but if I can't I'll switch to Linux and try to delve into Wine for games.