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eddy_why.doc
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1994-08-07
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Why Use EDDY?
-------------
With EDDY around, you can eliminate many of the small, special-purpose
utilities which are so indispensable to the non-EDDY user. So as a
bonus, you get to free up some disk space -- or at least, get back some
of what installing EDDY consumes. In addition to making common tasks
easier, EDDY has lots of seldom-needed but lifesaving-when-they-are
features.
The current EDDY is a greatly-improved version of the program reviewed
in "Computer Language", "PC Sources" and "MicroCornucopia" magazines.
Some quotes from those reviews...
"The interface ... is elegant."
"...clean, easy-to-use, well-written program."
"...quality of product we've seen from Peter Norton."
"the commands are extensive, the written documentation is excellent"
"EDDY ... offers some uncommon features"
EDDY has an intuitive, convenient interface for the common operations,
such as disk/directory/file management, file viewing, etc. Most of the
things you frequently need to do take only a keystroke or two. But EDDY
also addresses a number of problems which arise less often but are more
difficult to solve, if possible at all, with other utilities.
EDDY features full buzzword compliance:
- Pull-down menus
- Context-sensitive HELP
- Mouse support
- "Prune and Graft"
- "Point and Shoot"
- Configurability
- LAN support
- (and of course, "user friendliness" and "ease of use")
Complete understanding of the examples below may require using EDDY, or
(horrors!) reading some of the User's Manual. However, I hope these
will interest you enough that you'll give EDDY a try.
If you know of programs that do things easier or better than EDDY,
please let me know, so I can stop making dubious claims (or maybe
improve EDDY). On the other hand, if you find some more neat things to
do with the program, or have any ideas for enhancements, I'd like to
hear about them.
Consider...
...If you want to keep track of changes made to your directories (by
other people, installation programs, virii or whatever), use EDDY's
"snapshot" feature. Press [Shift+F5] on the top line to create a
snapshot, and [Shift+F3] on the same line to see what changes have been
made after the snapshot.
...Have you ever installed a new package and wondered what it was doing
to your disk (watching the "busy" light blink), and then been unable to
find the new or changed files? (You didn't use the "snapshot" feature
first, did you?). Many programs create "hidden" files, in directories
of their choice, on your disk. You can find them by using EDDY's
"Where's That File?" function combined with attribute filtering.
Enter: "eddy/w +H", and EDDY will search the whole disk for hidden files.
....Or maybe you'd like to know whether any new files were created or
any of your files were changed by the program you just ran at (say) 9 PM
on Sep. 14, 1993. If you enter: eddy/w/h c:\ ">09/14/93 08:59p" EDDY
will find the files, whatever directory they're in, hidden or not.
....Would you like to organize your disk directory structure
differently? Maybe move some directories to a different disk or
partition? Or just copy a directory to a floppy to take to the office
(or home from there)? EDDY will copy or move entire directories (and
their subdirectories) to different parts of their current disk, OR TO
ANY OTHER DISK.
....You don't have to worry whether you should be copying files from A:
to B:, or from B: to A:, nor whether there's room for all the files you
want to copy. EDDY will tell you if there's not enough room before
starting the copying, and warn you before copying a newer file over an
older one.
....Did you ever lose a file because your only copy was on a disk that
somehow developed a "bad spot", and couldn't be read? With EDDY's COPY
([F5]) command, you can at least save all the GOOD data that's left,
leaving out only the part of the file that's actually in the "bad"
sector. So you don't have to key in all that data or text again!
....Want to know the differences between two directories? EDDY will
TELL you (not just display the directories for you to compare to one
another), if you press [Shift+^F3].
EDDY will report whether a file is in the other directory or not; if it
is, the relation between the timestamps -- newer, older, same, or even
same timestamp but different size -- will be displayed as well. You can
stop to look at either file's contents, compare the data in the two
files, copy, move, patch or delete them, and then continue on with the
next file.
....You can also do the directory comparisons, and file copying,
deleting, etc., based on the results of those comparisons, in batch
mode. Great for routine backups and directory cleanups!
....EDDY's string-finding capabilities are powerful and easy to set up.
You can find strings in one or more files (including binary files),
anywhere in a directory tree -- even hyphenated words continued from one
line to the next -- and you can use strings with a mixture of hex and
ASCII if you want. There's also a similarly powerful "FIND and REPLACE"
capability.
You can even find what ASCII strings may be lurking in a binary file:
use a FIND for "??????", for example, and EDDY will show you all text
strings of 6 bytes or longer.
....Are you annoyed by the extra command line prompt generated by DOS
when you run a batch file? You can use EDDY's PATCH function to
truncate the batch file, deleting the final, line-terminating bytes
(usually 3: carriage return, line feed and "right arrow") at the end of
the file. With these bytes gone, the extra prompt won't be generated.
With big batch files, who knows? You might even save a "K" or so of
disk real estate, if your file was just over a cluster size boundary.
You can chop bytes off the front or back of any file and you can add
bytes -- for example, ^Zs -- at the end of any file. Or you can expand
all TAB characters in a file to the equivalent number of spaces (0 - 8,
as you choose).
....Have you ever wanted to read or modify a file of text that was
created by WordStar (tm), but that's not the word processor you use?
Hard to work with, wasn't it? Well, with EDDY, you can not only read it
easily on the screen, but you can convert it to pure ASCII, so you can
use your favorite editor or word processor on it if you want.
....Would you like to send entire disks by modem, rather than just
files? EDDY lets you copy an entire disk -- boot sector, FAT,
directories and all -- to a file. You can then compress the file, send
it, and the receiver can recreate an exact copy of that disk (if he has
a copy of EDDY, too!).
....If you're running short of space on disk, even the amount of space
used by the subdirectories themselves can be significant. A directory
always keeps all space that was ever allocated to it, even if all the
files have been deleted. EDDY will tell you how much space your
directories occupy, if you turn on option /D.
....When you have a long list of files that you want to process (say,
you want to MASM most -- but not all -- the .ASM files), and you don't
want to type in the commands one-by-one, the normal thing to do is build
a multi-line batch file (or one with "FOR" statements) and execute it.
With EDDY it's easier; just display the directory containing the files,
(press [Alt+w], and enter "*.asm"). Then "Ignore" the ones you don't
want ([Alt+F7]) and use the "Point-n-Shoot" capability ([Shift+F9]).
Have a look at the EDDY.USE file included with this package to get a
better picture of the power and potential of "Point-n-Shoot".