DBISQL and its quirky command line

Using Sybase's dbisql tool to run database schema updates is an everyday part of my job. One would think that it's an everyday part of the job of many people who have to maintain and upgrade databases.

As such, I was expecting dbisql to be a robust tool that would understand input on the command line and parse it in a useful manner. However, apparently no one at Sybase has ever had to run a script through dbisql using a fully qualified path.

The command READ file1>>& file2 runs the contents of file1 and echoes the commands into file2.

The command READ c:\program files\xx\file1 doesn't work.

The command READ file1>>& c:\program files\file2 doesn't work.

The command READ "c:\program files\xx\file1", nor any variation with quotes thereof, doesn't work.

So, off to do some text parsing and substitution, to find every instance of "c:\program files" and replace it with "c:\progra~1"......