NULL mag Issue 09 29 Run dos apps with python

eZine lover (@eZine)

Published in 

null magazine

 · 4 years ago

this is a strange thing... :) i recently found some old DOS cdroms, with many goodies in them and wanted to test them under my linux machine. one way was to mount the cd inside a DOSBOX instance and browse the CD via the DOS command line.

perhaps this would be a good (perhaps the only) solution back in the days, but now i am much older and i like my GUI file manager :)

so... here we are... a python script to the rescue!!! what it does, is simple. i associate the script with the DOS .EXE files and when i double click one of them, in my file manager (pcmanfm) the script runs DOSBOX with the current folder, where the DOS program is, automatically mounted and executes it instantly.

this way, you can browse large DOS CDROM collections via your file manager very easy. hope you like it and use it.

#!/usr/bin/python3 
import os 

import sys 
import subprocess 

dosbox_exe = 'dosbox' 
dosbox_args = ['"D:"'] 
def run_dosbox(args): 
  arg = "-conf /home/user/scripts/doscfg.conf" 

 
  for cmd in args: 
    arg = arg +" -c "+cmd 

  arg = arg +" -c echo '"+str(sys.argv[1])+"'" 

 
  os.system(dosbox_exe+" "+arg) 
run_dosbox(dosbox_args) 
print (sys.argv)