Re: $Prefereces and Cache
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg8837] Re: [mg8795] $Prefereces and Cache
- From: seanross at worldnet.att.net
- Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 02:40:03 -0400
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Edward A. Gooding wrote: > > The somewhat convoluted directory structure that MMA 3.0 uses for some of > its files (e.g. /Caches/) seems to give Scandisk problems in Win95. Is > there a way to change the default directory structure? Changing the > $PreferencesDirectory in the front end only seems to work until the > kernel is shut down. The installation process does not give any choice > about where to install the Caches and so forth. > > -- > Ed Gooding > > gooding at mail.sas.upenn.edu It is not the convoluted directory structure that gives scandisk problems, but the length of the path names. For some silly reason, scandisk, a utility that ships with Windows95 which allows long file names, seems to care whether or not the file would be useable in a DOS session. The solution to the problem is to disable the "automatically fix problems" options on scandisk. Otherwise, it will truncate all your file names and render your copy of mathematica useless. If you want to change the preferences, you will need to do so in one of the many init.m files. I think the one you want is in the Program Files\Common Files\Mathematica\3.0\FrontEnd\init.m. The way to tell if this is the file you want is to try doing something like setting a harmless global variable or a statement like Print["hello"] and seeing if it executes when you start up Mathematica. Edit this file with the $Preferences or other statements you want. This file can contain any global customizations like certain packages you always want loaded.