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Software Vault: The Gold Collection
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Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO
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PK-CED.DOC
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1993-05-03
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File: PK-CED.DOC
This file defines CED synonyms that make the operation of PK361
easier to remember, easier to type, and therefore easier to use.
If you already know about CED and PK361, skip to the section
called THE SYNONYMS.
ABOUT CED
CED was written, copyrighted, and placed in the public domain by
Christopher Dunford. It is one of the most useful programs around.
If you don't have it, get it! It's available on most bulletin
boards.
CED allows fast editing of DOS commands. Previously-used DOS
commands can be recalled from a command stack using the up- and
down-arrow keys. There are many other features in CED, but the
one we are interested in now is CED's synonym or aliasing
ability.
If you create an ASCII configuration file for CED called, say,
CED.CFG, with the following lines
SYN c copy
SYN d dir
SYN sy ^cd \symph^symphony
and then invoke CED from the DOS prompt by typing
CED -fCED.CFG
then, through the good graces of CED, DOS will henceforth interpret
c AS copy
d AS dir
and
sy AS cd \symph FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER COMMAND symphony.
This is aliasing.
ABOUT PK361
PK361 is a shareware product from the fertile mind of Phil Katz.
It is an archiving utility used to compress files and combine
them together. Almost all bulletin boards use an archiving
process on their files; hence their use of the file extension
.ARC.
PK361.EXE is a self-de-arcing file that produces two primary
tools: PKPAK and PKUNPAK. PKPAK arcs files; PKUNPAK de-arcs
them. In my opinion PKPAK and PKUNPAK are superior to the older
ARC.COM program produced by SEA.
The primary advantage of the PK package is that the ARC file
itself and the constituent files within it can be commented and
these comments can be seen without actually de-arcing the whole
thing. Thus what you see upon query will look something like what
you get when you ask for a file listing in a bulletin board area.
Phil also claims his PK series is very fast.
THE SYNONYMS
One difficulty with the PK series is remembering the command
structure and (sometimes) even which program to use. The old ARC
series had such subsets as ARCV, ARCE, ARCA. Many of us used
these not because they loaded faster (which they did), but
because we didn't have to bother to remember the ARC command
syntax.
The following lines, included in your CED configuration file
(probably called CED.CFG or some such), will allow the same sort
of mnemonic operation for the PK series.
SYN pka pkpak ax
SYN pkac pkpak acx
SYN pkc pkpak cx
SYN pkd pkpak d
SYN pke pkunpak
SYN pkl pkunpak -cm
SYN pkp pkunpak -pa
SYN pku pkpak -ux
SYN pkuc pkpak -ucx
SYN pkv pkunpak -vv
SYN pkvc pkpak -vc
These commands are included here in the separate file CED.PK so
that you can just copy them into your CED.CFG file with an
editor.
I assume the correspondence is obvious, but just in case --
pka A)dd with arc file comment only
pkac A)dd with constituent file C)omments too
pkc C)omments only are added
pkd D)elete
pke E)xtract
pkl L)ist constituent file(s) using the more feature
pkp P)rint constituent file(s) in ASCII mode
pku U)pdate with arc file comment only
pkuc U)pdate with constituent file C)omments too
pkv V)erbose list of files
pkvc V)erbose list of files including C)omments
One example:
PKE MUCH *.COM D:\
will de-arc all .COM files contained in the arcfile MUCH.ARC
and place them in the root directory of drive D:
These should do most of what you want to do. I have not included
the add-to-arc-then-delete-file option because I think it's
dangerous. If something goes awry, you may be left with deleted
files you want back. As the disk get fuller (and that is probably
why you arcing in the first place), the probability increases
that DOS will write over the deleted files so that even Norton or
Mace can't come to the rescue.
THE .BAT ALTERNATIVE
Personally I hate little BAT files and with CED have been able to
eliminate most of them. But if you like the little devils, you
can achieve the same mnemonics.
For example, constructing PKA.BAT with the following single line:
pkpak ax %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
will probably get the job done.
A BRAINTEASER
What would the following command do?
SYN pkx ^pkunpak %1 %2^%2 %3 %4 %5^del %2
CAUTION! Experiment with this only on a ram disk.
John Pearson
09/16/88
can be reached at
PC Pursuit's XBBS