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Shelling out to an external (Windows) application. Possible?

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First post, by TBJ

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Hi all,

Apologies if there has been a topic posted on this before but I did search and didn't find anything.

I am trying to make a legacy DOS accounting package that I am involved with maintaining run under DOSBOX for the purpose of making it run on a 64-bit system. I have got most of it working but one brick wall I have hit is that the software shells out to Microsoft Word (and occasionally a few other Windows-based applications) for the purpose of printing reports. Obviously DOSBOX will not run these itself, so I am looking for a way of launching 32-bit applications outside DOSBOX by doing something inside it.

Has anyone ever done anything like this before? I would appreciate any thoughts on how I might do it.

Thanks 😀

Reply 1 of 2, by Qbix

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you would have to change the sourcecode of dosbox for that.
We don't support it currently (nor plan to!).

Water flows down the stream
How to ask questions the smart way!

Reply 2 of 2, by TeaRex

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You could create a "notifier" file from DOSBox, then have a Windows thread in the background that watches for the file to show up and/or change. Obviously this is a hack, but might be quicker to get going than modifying DOSBox and then having to maintain the modifications when DOSBox changes in the future. Obviously, you'll have to beware of race conditions!

tearex

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