On Windows, Red added to the path, can't be run from another folder on cmd

[SoleSoul]

Summary

Red can't be run from a different path on Windows.

How to reproduce

• Put red.exe in a folder that is in the path
• On the command line, navigate to another folder (not the one where red.exe is)
• type 'red'

Expected behavior

The Red interpreter should run.

Observed behavior

c:>red
PROGRAM ERROR: Invalid encapsulated data.

[Nenad Rakocevic]

Some other crashing case (and workaround):

C:\Dev\Red\build>..\red 
PROGRAM ERROR: Invalid encapsulated data. 

C:\Dev\Red\build>..\red.exe 

-=== Red Console alpha version ===- 
(only ASCII input supported) 

red>>

[Hostile Fork]

This appears to be an issue with the encapper not being able to gracefully handle cases where it is not invoked via a fully specified path.

It should have been able to use system/options/boot to do this without error, but... Rebol 2 and its encapper are not open source. So unless it is hacked...or its requests to the filesystem hooked somehow... a simple workaround would be to invoke red through a batch file, which forces a fully specified path.

To do that: rename red.exe to red-exe.exe, and in the same directory as that executable put a red.bat file containing the following line:

"%~dp0red-exe.exe" %*

Moving the exe out of the way means the batch file will be preferred. The quotes sanitize the path, which uses the cryptic %~dp0 to get the path (no close percent used, unlike envrionment variables). The %* is a construct for taking the individual arguments, e.g. %1 %2 ... %n.

[Nenad Rakocevic]

Thanks a lot @hostilefork.

[Anson Mansfield]

I had this same issue when I was trying to get sublime text to use red as a build system on Ubuntu 15.04.
My solution was similar; I created a shell script like this:

#!/bin/bash
red $@

and called that instead.

[Constantine Dokolas]

For the Windows batch file, I'd add a @ in front, like this:

@"%~dp0red-exe.exe" %*

The way I've actually used it is by dropping the executable to my C:\Utils\ folder (it's in the PATH variable) and also creating a red.bat file there with @"%~dp0red-063.exe" %* in it (I kept the original filename to keep track of the version I'm using).