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Config file internal use of relative or absolute paths

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First post, by sanedu

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Hello.

Inside the conf file, what are the rules and best practices regarding the use of paths when one is needed? For example, in the [dosbox] section, there is a "captures:" option. Should you use the path relative to the working directory (the C:/ directory as seen by DOSBox) or relative to the real drive root outside DOSBox?

And how should you write the path? With "" around it?

On other DOSBox releases (ECE, for example), do the same rules apply?

Sorry it this is explained somewhere but I've been searching here and in the wiki and didn't find any clear answer.

Thanks!

Reply 1 of 4, by jmarsh

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It does not recognize any paths on mounted drives (they are not mounted when the .conf file is read...)
The easiest way to use relative paths is make them relative to the .conf file itself.
Quotes are only needed if there's a space in the path.

Reply 2 of 4, by sanedu

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Thank you.

That's what I suspected but , in the case of the Gravis Ultrasound emulation ([gus] section), the "ultradir:" path is supposed to be relative to the mounted C:\, not the real C:\ root, so I started wondering that maybe it should always be like that.

In this case, the path you declare in the "ultradir:" conf line invokes a SET command at DOSBox startup so, if you put a real path there, DOSBox wouldn't find it. My conf file [gus] section has that line as:

ultradir=C:\drivers\ULTRA161

That Ultra161 folder real path is "D:\Games\DOS\DOSGames\drivers\ULTRA161" (DOSGames is mounted as C:\). I have to use the mounted path or else DOSBox doesn't find the Gravis files.

So, how do we know when we should use the real path or the mounted path?

Reply 4 of 4, by sanedu

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Oh, I get it. That's probably obvious to someone with more knowledge but, for me, it's not clear when a path is going to be passed as a string to an internal command or when it's supposed to be read outside DOSBox.

Thank you for the explanation!

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