It works a bit different than DOS, but I don't see it (literally) hanging DOSBox. When you enter too many characters the carriage return is ignored; but you can still use backspace to reduce the number of characters until the carriage return is accepted.

The attached patch changes the input loop to behave more like DOS. The old textmode game "Snipes" uses the function when prompting for its two-character skill level, so there is at least one game that can benefit. 😉

got to look up the specs of that function again.

Qbix wrote:

got to look up the specs of that function again.

As a handy helper, I looked it up in my DOS reference files:

Byte 1: Maximum number of chars the buffer will take, including CR. Reading STDIN and filling the buffer co […]
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Byte 1: Maximum number of chars the buffer will take, including CR.
Reading STDIN and filling the buffer continues until a carriage
return (<Enter> or 0Dh) is read. If the buffer fills to one less
than the maximum number the buffer can hold, each additional
number read is ignored and ASCII 7 (BEL) is output to the
display until a carriage return is read. (you must set this
value)

(reference is counting from 1, not 0) Looking at the patch, it looks like the code was an off-by-one error for a full-buffer... probably, because the standard seems odd by current design principles.

the patch looks like an improvement.

However, this function should oneday be rewritten to include the functionality that is now used when typing a command in the shell; then the shell should call this function, but tab completion makes things a little tricky.