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Text File | 1995-01-07 | 17.7 KB | 423 lines

DATES.DOC 01/07/95 This program keeps track of birthdays, anniversaries, coming events, etc giving you advance warning so you can send out cards, leave town, etc. Features of this program: * Initially defaults to showing all events happening within 14 days * You can set up multiple date files, each with their own day threshold; for example, one file for birthdays, another for business meetings, etc * You can establish a different threshold on an event-by-event basis if desired. * This program can be included in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file to provide notices every time you turn on your PC. * You can specify dates like the "last Thursday" or the "first Monday" of a given month. * Vague dates can be entered (e.g. "04/XX/XX Easter") when the exact day varies from year to year. * Dates can be in the United States format (/DATE=mm/dd/yy) or in most other formats (e.g. /DATE=dd-mm-yy). * Months can be entered as sequential months (1 for January, 2 for February, etc) or else entered as the months themselves (JAN, FEB, etc). * Dates don't have to be padded (9/6/94, 09/06/94, and SEP/06/1994 are all accepted). * The program will show you the weekday, age, and/or days until the event if desired. * Comment lines can be displayed if desired (e.g. "Events relating to work:") * The program can automatically pause when done or after a set number of lines if desired. * Entries can be sorted before display based on their "date difference" (the number of days before the event occurs) or in their original order. The dates file is a simple ASCII text file, created and maintained with any text editor. Each record should begin with a date (typically in mm/dd/yy format) followed by a description of the event. For example: 05/05/93 Lucy Baines Blank lines or any line which begins with a colon (":") or semi-colon (";") are ignored by the program. Lines which begin with an asterisk ("*") are printed verbatim (minus the asterisk); add spacing after the asterisk if you want the lines to be indented upon display. Note: Comments will be ignored if /SORT is specified. For the date portion of the record, you have some flexibility. By default, the program expects dates to be in a mm/dd/yy format. So August 5, 1993 is "08/05/93". You can change the sequence of the numbers by using the "/DATE=format" option. For example, you can specify "/DATE=dd-mm-yy" if you want. Typically, most date formats will use one of the delimiters "-", ".", or "/" between all various day, month, and year fields. For example, /DATE=dd.mm.yy instead of /DATE=dd.mm/dd. If this is done, your input fields can entered in a very flexible manner. The routine will parse the date field based on the delimiters and accept fields with or without padding, years with or without the century, and alphabetic months instead of just numeric ones. For example, using /DATE=dd.mm.yy, all of the following September 5, 1994 events are the same: 05.09.94 Big event 5.9.94 Same event 5.sep.1994 Still the same thing 05.september.1994 And yet again the same event If you want, you can specify a day of the month based on a relative weekday within the month. For example, in the United States, Thanksgiving falls on the last Thursday in November and Father's Day is the third Sunday in June. If it's a relative weekday from the beginning of the month, DATES allows you to enter these in the "day" field by using "nww" where "n" indicates the sequence of the weekday (if you leave it off, it's presumed to be the first) and "ww" is the first two letters of the day. If it's a relative weekday from the end of the month, use "Lnww" ("n" defaults to 1). So, for these two examples, they can be entered in your file as: 11/LTH/XX Thanksgiving 06/3SU/XX Father's Day The month portion of the date *has* to be filled in. The day and year portions can be "xx" if desired. If a day is "xx", you will be given the notice for the entire month and for 15 days before the start of the month. For dates which vary from year to year and which can't be done using something like "LTH" or "2MO" (primarily Easter) you can either use the "xx" option for the day or revise the file every year. Records in the file don't have to be in any particular order. The dates will be presented in the order they appear in the file so putting them in chronological order makes the most sense. There's an initial age threshold for each input dates files. Thus you could have a birthday dates file and ask for 14 days warning for each event in it and have a separate file for important job-related functions that has perhaps a 30-day warning. Additionally, you can specify age thresholds on an event-by-event basis by beginning the relevant descriptions with "/Ddays" (e.g. "11/01/95 /D60 BIG meeting!"). Specific age thresholds like this are not overridden by the "/Ddays" parameter specified from the command line. In addition to being able to specify "/Ddays" on an event-by-event basis, certain command-line parameters can be imbedded within the dates input file. See the discussion about "Syntax" later for a description of these parameters. These parameters must begin in the first column of the line and only one parameter can be specified on a line. These parameters override one or more defaults for the current input file only and can be set and reset throughout the file. The acceptable parameters are: /Ddays (can also be specified for an individual event) /DATE=format /DATE and /-DATE /DAY and /-DAY (same as /WEEKDAY and /-WEEKDAY) /AGE and /-AGE /CTDOWN and /-CTDOWN /COLOR=nnn nnn nnn nnn For example: 01/01/XX A stellar new years event /-AGE /-DAY 01/20/92 Expect the unexpected! 01/22/94 Another one (still covered by same parameters) /AGE 01/23/94 Skipping age on this one /-AGE 01/25/94 And reinstating it here A sample United States-oriented DATES.TXT file is provided and consists of the following lines: 01/01/xx New Year's Day 01/3MO/xx Martin Luther King's birthday 02/14/xx Valentine's Day 03/17/xx St. Patrick's Day 03/30/xx -ish Easter 04/07/xx -ish Daylight Savings Time begins 05/2SU/xx Mother's Day 05/LMO/xx Memorial Day 05/31/57 Bruce Guthrie 07/04/xx July 4th 09/1MO/xx Labor Day 10/27/xx -ish Daylight Savings Time ends 10/31/xx Halloween 11/11/xx Veteran's Day 11/4TH/xx Thanksgiving 12/25/xx Christmas As far as the actual display of the information is concerned, each event is typically presented as just "date event", where any relative day references like "4TH" get resolved before the date is shown. For example, presume it's May 25 in 1994, /D14 is in effect, and your input file has the following three lines: 05/28/30 Mr.Fury 05/LMO/xx Memorial Day 05/31/57 Bruce Guthrie The initial display settings are /DATE /-DAY /-AGE /-CTDOWN. This presents the information as: 05/28/30 Mr.Fury 05/30/xx Memorial Day 05/31/57 Bruce Guthrie See the syntax descriptions for what each of these settings mean. Changing the settings to /-DATE /DAY /AGE /CTDOWN presents it as: [Sat] (64th) 3 days until Mr.Fury [Mon] 5 days until Memorial Day [Tue] (37th) 6 days until Bruce Guthrie Multiple input files with different date restrictions: You can specify multiple date input files. They are processed in the order they are entered. By default, each will have the initial date restriction (typically 14 days). You can override the date restriction for a specific file by including the date restriction after the file name. For example: DATES DATE1.TXT DATE2.TXT /D10 DATE3.TXT Given a default 14-day restriction, the date restrictions will be 14 days for DATE1.TXT and DATE3.TXT, 10 days for DATE2.TXT. If you want to override the date restriction for all files, include that date restriction before the file name. For example: DATES /D5 DATE1.TXT DATE2.TXT /D10 DATE3.TXT In this case, the date restriction will be 5 days for DATE1.TXT and DATE3.TXT and 10 days for DATE2.TXT. Specifying parameters: Parameters for this program can be set in the following ways. The last setting encountered always wins: - Read from an *.INI file (see below), - Through the use of an environmental variable (SET DATES=whatever), or - From the command line (see "Syntax" below) The DATES.INI file: DATES will read a DATES.INI file if one is found. (You can specify a different file name if desired.) The file is an ASCII text file that can be created maintained by hand. The file can consist or one or more command line parameters (only those that begin with a "/"; no multi-word ones), one statement per line. The file can also contain comments which are blank lines or any line beginning with: ; (semi-colon) : (colon) ' (quote) DATES looks for the initialization file in your default subdirectory first. It then searches for it in the subdirectory where the executable was and then goes through your DOS path. Passing in "/-I" or "/INULL" skips loading the INI file. This saves some execution time as the program does not need to search your path for the file. Syntax: DATES [ date_file [...] ] [ /Ddays ] [ /SKIP | /-SKIP ] [ /DATE=format ] [ /DATE | /-DATE ] [ /DAY | /-DAY ] [ /AGE | /-AGE ] [ /CTDOWN | /-CTDOWN ] [ /COLOR=nnn nnn nnn ] [ /MONO | /COLOR ] [ /Q | /-Q ] [ /SORT | /-SORT ] [ /GLOBAL | /-GLOBAL ] [ /CLS | /-CLS ] [ /P | /Pn | /-P ] [ /W | /W0 | /-W ] [ /R ] [ /Iinitfile | /-I ] [ /? ] [ > filename ] where: "date_file" is the name of the input text file. It can contain drive and path information if desired. This defaults to DATES.TXT. If no filename is specified, the program will check for it along your DOS path beginning with your default subdirectory. Multiple date files and date restrictions are allowed. See the notes above about this. "/Ddays" (or "days") are the number of days in advance you want the warning. Initially defaults to /D14. Generic days ("11/xx/xx") are not affected by this setting; you automatically get the notice 15 days before the beginning of the month and through the entire month itself. Events coded with specific "/Ddays" entries are also not affected by the command-line "/Ddays" setting. "/SKIP" says to print a message (unless /Q is specified) but otherwise ignore it if one or more of the date input files is not found. "/-SKIP" says to abort if any of the input files are not found. "/DATE=format" specifies the format that the date is to have. The date must consist of pairs of "mm" (month), "dd" (day), and "yy" (year) characters in any order. If a delimiter is used between the pairs, it can be any non-space character (like "-" or "/"). If your delimiter is the same between the three sets of date portions (e.g. /DATE=mm/dd/yy or /DATE=dd.mm.yy), you have a considerable amount of flexibility in terms of what sort of entries can appear. See the notes at the beginning of this documentation. Initially defaults to "/DATE=mm/dd/yy". "/DATE" indicates that the date is to be presented if the entry is show. This is initially the default. "/-DATE" skips showing the date of the event when it's displayed. "/DAY" (or "/WEEKDAY") shows the day of the week for each event if possible. "/-DAY" (or "/-WEEKDAY") skips showing the day of the week. This is initially the default. "/AGE" shows the age of the event when it's displayed. This is only done for entries that have a specific year. This is initially the default. "/-AGE" skips showing the age of the event. "/CTDOWN" adds a "x days until" message in front of any displayed event. "/-CTDOWN" skips adding the "x days until" message. This is initially the default. "/COLOR=nnn nnn nnn" specifies the color settings to use for (in order) regular text, dates happening today, and the ages of dates happening today. Any input lines which begin with an asterisk are printed using the third color set. Each setting must consist of three digits, the first two being the foreground color and the last being the background color. The foreground color should be padded on the left with a 0 if it is only one digit in length. Defaults to "COLOR=070 150 090". Foreground colors: Low intensity High intensity 0 = black 8 = dark grey 1 = blue 9 = light blue 2 = green 10 = light green 3 = cyan 11 = light cyan 4 = red 12 = light red 5 = magenta 13 = light magenta 6 = brown 14 = light yellow 7 = white 15 = bright white Adding 16 to any color will make the text blink. Background colors can consist of 0 to 7 above. Bright white on blue, for example, would be "151". "/MONO" suppresses all screen color settings. "/COLOR" allows screen color settings and is initially the default. "/Q" stops the printing every message except for the actual date lines. This option is automatically invoked if redirection is used. "/-Q" turns back on the printing of almost every message. This is the initially default unless redirection is used. "/SORT" sorts the entries by their date difference (the number of days between now and the date of the event). If you're using more than one dates file with the "/-GLOBAL" (default) parameter, all appropriate entries from a given dates file will be sorted and displayed before any entries from the next dates file are displayed. The "/GLOBAL" parameter will combine them all before sorting them. Using "/SORT" precludes you from showing any display comments (lines beginning with "*") in your file. Currently, the program limits you to displaying 100 items per input file if /SORT is specified; let me know if this limit is too low for you. "/-SORT" says to display the entries as they're found in the files. This is initially the default. "/GLOBAL" invokes "/SORT" and merges multiple date input files if found, sorting them as a unit instead of individually. "/-GLOBAL" treats each date input file as a unique entity for sorting purposes. This is initially the default. "/CLS" clears the display before showing the results. "/-CLS" does not clear the display first. This is the default. "/P" says to pause the output every 23 lines. (NOTE: The /P, /Pn, and /-P options affect pausing while listing events; the /W, /W0, /-W options affect pausing after the program finishes.) "/Pn" says to pause the output every n-number of lines. "/-P" says to not pause the output at all. This is initially the default. "/W" says to pause with a "Press any key to continue" message after the program finishes if any hits were found. "/W0" says to pause afterward whether any hits were found or not. "/-W" says to not pause afterward at all. This is initially the default. "/R" sets a DOS return code equal to the number of dates found. The standard way to use something like this is with a test on the DOS ERRORLEVEL in an AUTOEXEC.BAT file or something. For example: DATES /R IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO HITS GOTO END :HITS PAUSE :END ECHO DONE Note that the results of particular example could have been done easier using DATES' /W parameter. "/Iinitfile" says to read an initialization file with the file name "initfile". The file specification *must* contain a period. If no drive or path information is specified, the program will search for initfile beginning in your default subdirectory and then going throughout your DOS path. The use of an initialization file is optional. Initially defaults to "/IDATES.INI". "/-I" (or "/INULL") says to skip loading the initialization file. "/?" or "/HELP" or "HELP" shows you the syntax for the command. "> filename" redirects the output to a DOS file. This is standard DOS redirection. Automatically invokes /Q option and turns off the last of the status messages. Return codes: DATES returns the following ERRORLEVEL codes: 255 = syntax problems, or /? requested If /R is specified, the ERRORLEVEL code will be the number of hits found. Author: This program was written by Bruce Guthrie of Wayne Software. It is free for use and redistribution provided relevant documentation is kept with the program, no changes are made to the program or documentation, and it is not bundled with commercial programs or charged for separately. People who need to bundle it in for-sale packages must pay a $50 registration fee to "Wayne Software" at the following address. Additional information about this and other Wayne Software programs can be found in the file BRUCEymm.DOC which should be included in the original ZIP file. ("ymm" is replaced by the last digit of the year and the two digit month of the release. BRUCE312.DOC came out in December 1993. This same naming convention is used in naming the ZIP file that this program was included in.) Comments and suggestions can also be sent to: Bruce Guthrie Wayne Software 113 Sheffield St. Silver Spring, MD 20910 fax: (301) 588-8986 See BRUCEymm.DOC file for additional contact information. Foreign users: Please provide an Internet e-mail address in all correspondence.