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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.


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