When I was in windows 95 the "path" command, such as
"PATH=C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;c:n.bat" in
autoexec.bat made the computer access all the files in the "Path"
regardless in which directory I was in. In win98 this does not seem to
work. Am I doing something wrong or can win 98 be made to do the same?

Try
SETPATH C:\WINDOWS
OR whatever path you want.
Where's my money?

Thanks, computerjohnson-ga, for your comment. I added all 3 commands
setPATH, SETPATH and SET PATH to autoexec.bat. As a result the files
in the *.exe and *.com files in the "path"-ed files execute, but the
"dir" command does not list them. Is there another synthax to the
"path" command which will cause the "dir" command to list them too? It
seems that the synthax of the various commands to be placed in
autoexec.bat and config.sys vary between windows 95 and 98. Do you or
anybody know of a place where these differences can be found?

As for the money, with Google, no money can be transferred for a comment. 
Relist your comment as answer and the money will transfer
automaically. If you can answer my additional questions I will add an
$3.00 tip. At any rate many thanks.

The "dir" command has never looked at the whole path; the path is only
used when you type something in that doesn't match a built-in command
or a file in the current directory.

The PATH command does in fact still work in Windows 98, but your
syntax above is incorrect. You can in fact set the path in two basic
ways. You can use the SET command in the same way as for any other
environment variable:

SET PATH=[directory-list]

Or you can use the PATH command, which is basically a shortcut version
of this. Note that in the PATH command there is no = sign:

PATH [directory-list]

Also note that if you want lots of directories in the path and you
can't specify them all on one line, you can use multiple commands as
follows:

PATH [directory-list-1]
PATH %PATH%;[directory-list-2]
...

You can put %PATH% anywhere in the second and subsequent lines; it
just depends on which order you want your directories to be searched.
It's most efficient to put your most commonly used ones first.

%PATH% is the standard way to refer to the contents of the PATH
environment variable inside batch files. This is generic: any
environment variable can be referenced by the variable name with %
before and after. This is commonly used, for instance, to refer to
your Windows directory, temp directory, etc (%WINBOOTDIR%, %TEMP%,
...).