handler not waiting when calling shell() under Win98

[revolution at knowledgeworks.plus.com]

Hi Chris,

I'm not familiar with this area, but I just did a quick test and the 
difference is between the shell calling command.com (on win95,98,ME) and 
calling cmd.exe (NT,Win2K,XP).  Have a look at the "shellCommand" property 
in Rev.  Try setting this to command.com on XP (it has both command.com 
and cmd. exe as command processors), and you will see you get the same 
behaviour.  I know that is not a fix, but it explains where the bug lies. 
I just had a quick search back through the archives and no-one seems to 
have found this discrepancy before.  My guess is that Runrev tested on the 
real Win32 not on Dos7.  But you are right - does seem like a bug to me 
too.  There's nothing in bugzilla about it that I could find.

If you are close to a deadline, all I can think is that at the start of 
your shell command you create some temporary file, and you make your 
script watch that file and wait for the file to disappear.   At the end of 
your shell command, you delete the file.  Hope that is of some help.

Regards,
Bernard Devlin

>>
Has anyone run into this problem?  I have a Rev standalone that launches 
an
external installer program using the shell() function.  The docs
specifically say that the current handler will pause until the shell 
returns
its result, but this doesn't seem to be happening under Win98 or Me.  Does
anyone have any ideas?  My standalone depends on this, and it works fine
under Win 2000/XP.  Seems to be a nasty bug.  Is there some way I can get
around it?
<<