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1992-01-10
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ADDIT.COM (Version 1.0)
Douglas Boling February 11, 1992 (Utilities)
ADDIT.COM is a small DOS TSR (terminate & stay resident) utility (3.5K)
that adds negative & positive numbers on your screen. You simply block
the on-screen area that contains the relevant numbers, hit the Plus key,
and then you can paste the displayed total either into the same or another
file.
USING ADDIT
The complete syntax for ADDIT is
ADDIT [/U] [/B]
When entered on the DOS command line or as a line in your
AUTOEXEC.BAT file, ADDIT installs itself in memory and waits for you
to call upon its services. The /U switch lets you uninstall the program,
freeing any memory it used. The only restriction on unloading is that
if any additional TSRs were loaded after ADDIT, they must be removed
before uninstalling ADDIT.
Use the /B parameter, and ADDIT will use the video BIOS calls
instead of writing directly to video memory. While this is much slower
than directly writing to video memory, it can come in handy if you have
a nonstandard video board that's not CGA or HDA compatible. If ADDIT
wrote directly to the display memory of an incompatible adapter, you
would see garbage on the screen or your machine might even lock up.
The default hotkey to activate ADDIT is Alt-<Left Shift>. The F1
key brings up a help screen. When you're done with ADDIT, press the
Esc key and ADDIT will return to the background to wait for the next
time it's needed.
When you pop it up, ADDIT presents a one-line banner across the
top of the screen and puts its own block cursor at the spot your program
cursor occupied. The usual arrow keys move the ADDIT cursor, with the
Home and End keys taking it to the beginning and end of the line. The
PgUp and PgDn keys take you to the top and bottom of the screen. To
block (or highlight) an area on screen, hold down the Shift key while
moving the cursor. Since you will normally want to highlight a number
of whole rows, the easiest technique is to go to the top line to be
marked and hit the End key. Then, while holding down the Shift key,
hit the Down Arrow key as many times as required. The section will
then be highlighted. After releasing the Shift key, any subsequent
cursor movement will unblock the highlighted area.
To sum the numbers contained in the blocked-off area, simply hit
the Plus key. (Either the Plus key on the numeric keypad or on the
regular keyboard will do.) ADDIT can handle numbers with up to ten
decimal places. The total will be displayed in the ADDIT banner and
will be stored in a buffer so you can subsequently paste it anywhere.
Positive numbers in the highlighted area will show up on color screens
in yellow (by default); negative numbers (those preceded by a minus
sign) will be displayed in red (by default). This allows you to check
that all of the numbers you want (and only the ones you want) included
have been added.
Note that if a dash (that is, the minus sign) occurs between two
numbers, the second number will be considered negative. But if a dash
is the last character on the line and a number begins the succeeding
line, the hidden end-of-line marker inserted by some word processors
can fool ADDIT into thinking that the number following is positive.
Its color will be your clue.*** How ADDIT distinguishes numbers from
other characters is discussed in the sidebar "Teaching ADDIT to Read."***
Hitting the P key while ADDIT is active will paste the displayed
sum at the cursor location. ADDIT then automatically exits, but it
continues to remember the total in its buffer. Thus, you can paste
the same sum into several places or documents. If the point where you
want to put the result is on a different screen--or in a different
document, perhaps requiring you to exit your application and start up
another--you first exit ADDIT by hitting the Esc key. Then find the
insertion spot you want, bring up ADDIT again by pressing Alt-<Left
Shift>, and hit P. You can clear the banner and buffer at any time by
starting to highlight a new area.
Douglas Boling is a contributing editor of PC Magazine.