Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/powerb5.zip/P5MSC002.TIP

Text File | 1993-06-01 | 4KB | 78 lines

"File open" dialog boxes often give only a partial listing
of a directory (e.g. '*.wri' for Windows Write, '*.pas' for
Turbo Pascal, '*.txt' for Windows Notepad, and so on). I got
tired of this, so I sat down with The Norton Utilities and
changed the file specs in all my executable files to '*.*'.
To do this, make a new copy of the file and search it for
the undesirable extension. Type a * and two spaces after the
period, and your directory listings will be full of files
forever.

Daniel Woo
Huntsville, Alabama

Editor's Note: This daring technique can be very useful for
applications that default their file browsers to files with
certain extensions. It doesn't work with everything, but it
should work with a good many programs, including most
Windows accessories. However, it's recommended only for
those who are bold enough to risk a system crash if
something goes awry. If you're willing to take the chance,
here's how to use The Norton Utilities 6.0 Disk Editor to
make the patch. We'll use the Windows Notepad as our sample
application because its browser shows only files with the
TXT extension, and text files have many more extensions than
that. You must be out of Windows to make this change,
because the Disk Editor won't and shouldn't run in a
multitasking environment.

First, make your WINDOWS directory the current one, and copy
NOTEPAD.EXE to NEWNOTE.EXE in order to avoid losing the
original program. Start the Disk Editor with the command
DISKEDIT NEWNOTE.EXE /W (depending on how you installed
Norton, you may need to type DE instead of DISKEDIT). The /W
switch forces the editor to let you write changes to the
file. If you've entered the command correctly, you'll find
yourself in the Norton Disk Editor,  with the file displayed
in hexadecimal on the left and in ASCII on the right. Press
<Ctrl>-S to start a search, specify *.txt as your search
string, and press <Enter>. Once the string is found, press
<Right> to bring up the cursor, and <Tab>, if needed, to
move it from the hex to the ASCII. Change the "*.TXT" to
"*.*  " , putting two spaces after the second star. (In some
programs, you can also shorten the string by placing a zero
byte after the second star. However, the spaces work just as
well in virtually all programs, and they ensure
compatibility.)

Next, press <Ctrl>-G to confirm that you want to write to
disk and to search for more occurrences of the pattern (in
the case of Notepad, there will be one more). Finally, leave
the disk editor by pressing <Ctrl>-Q.

Back at the DOS prompt, type win newnote to see what you've
done. You should find that the default file search pattern
in the program is now *.*. When you feel confident that the
modified program works, rename the original to something
like OLDNOTE.EXE, and rename the altered version
NOTEPAD.EXE.

It shouldn't happen with Notepad, but when you modify
another program, you may find that rather than changing the
default extension for the "file open" box, you've
unwittingly changed the extension used by a different part
of the program. This will cause problems later. So if your
change doesn't appear to have worked, revert immediately to
the original version of the program. Finally, if your
application program checks itself for modifications by
viruses, beware: You may find that patching the code sets
off a false alarm.


Title: Seeing All Your Files
Category: MSC
Issue Date: April, 1992
Editor: Brett Glass
Supplementary Files: None
Filename: P5MSC002.TIP