is perl better?

[Terry Reedy]

"jon c" <jon_couchman at hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:Law11-F108dhVtRRM4c0002bf6d at hotmail.com...
> the error is coming from windows!
>
> the error message is as I wrote it.
>
> if you try and execute the command directly from bat you get the error
input
> line too long!

As I expected...

> can perl be somehow bypassing the windows terminal and running the
command
> directly (does this make sense?)

It must be.  Given that it (reportedly) bypasses the C stdio library (on
Windows), it would not surprise me.  With more users, probably had one hit
length limit sooner, and with greater willingness than Python developers to
bypass Ansi C, might have done so.

Besides trying Hansen's idea of popen instead of systen() (or vice versa),
3 ideas:

1. Write minimal Perl program to make call, and call that from Python ;-)

2. Rewrite Java program to input long list from file instead of command
line, if such is possible (I have no idea) and if you can write Java or get
someone who does (no idea of that either).

3. Read win perl source to determine what system calls it is using and then
use Hammond's PyWin extensions to do same from Python.

Trying to be helpful,

Terry J. Reedy