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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 1990
^^ T-SHELL ADDS DOS-LIKE COMMANDS TO EXTENDED BASIC
^^^^^^^^^^a brief review by Charles Good
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Lima Ohio User Group
In recent years several "extended basic enhancements"
have been released commercially, mainly for the benefit of
XB programmers. These include EZ-KEYS PLUS, SUPERBASIC, and
COMMAND DOS. Now us ordinary mortal XB USERS have T-SHELL,
one of the most important and useful software packages to
appear for the extanded basic USER in some time. T-SHELL
is FREE (public domain, not Freeware) and was initially
released recently as part of Barry Travers's GENIAL TRAVelER
v2 #5. It sits transparent in memory unaffected by any XB
code except CALL INIT, and allows you to do the following
from XB command mode:
CATALOG any drive of any name to screen or printer.
COPY individual files or entire disks.
PROTECT and UNPROTECT a file.
RENAME a file or a disk.
SWEEP a disk. (dangerous!!)
TYPE a DV80 file to the screen or a printer.
Although is not specifically stated in the T-SHELL doc,
you can MERGE any XB program that does not contain CALL INIT
onto the end of T-SHELL any place after T-SHELL's line
number 10 and then resave the whole thing to disk. Then,
every time you OLD or RUN the XB program, T-SHELL will also
be there. You can't use the T-SHELL commands from within
the program, but when the program ENDs or you BREAK the
program, T-SHELL's commands will be there in memory waiting
for you to use from command mode.
The only important DOS feature I find lacking in
T-SHELL is a way to INITILAIZE a blank disk (something you
can do from command mode with SUPERBASIC). For example, you
need a preinitialized disk in order to use the COPY command.
Tony McGovern, in a letter to me, once said that having an
instantly available disk initialization routine is sort of
like having a loaded gun laying around. Nevertheless, I
would like to see this feature incorporated into future
versions of T-SHELL.
T-SHELL's author is Travis Watford, the author of the
well known public domain program MAX-RLE and several
commercial TI and Geneve programs. His T-SHELL doc appears
below and describes in detail the fantastic potential of
this software.
------------------------------------
T-SHELL Notes by Travis Watford
T-SHELL is a software package
designed to provide the Extended BASIC
programmer/user with some of the basic
disk access utilities that TI, in
their infinite wisdom, chose not only
to leave out, but, in fact, to hinder.
T-SHELL allows you to type disk
commands at the Extended BASIC command
line as though they were built in. A
list of the commands that T-SHELL adds
to your system follows in detail, so I
will not give one here.
Loading T-SHELL
T-SHELL is provided here as a
program image file. You simply enter
RUN "DSK1.T-SHELL" to load and make
the package active.
Once loaded, T-SHELL is turned
off/on by:
CALL LINK("UNSET")
CALL LINK("SET")
If for any reason you decide
to remove T-SHELL by typing in "CALL
INIT", you must first turn T-SHELL off
as described above. The package as
supplied should work on any 4A system.
If, however, you use a SYSTEX-like
package to add additional assembly
routines to T-SHELL, the resulting
program may no longer run on any
machine other than the one on which
the alterations were made.
Using T-SHELL
T-SHELL commands are typed at
the command line just like Extended
BASIC commands. There are currently
ten active commands, although more
will be added as I get around to it.
Commands may be typed in any mixture
of upper and lower case. Arguments in
brackets are optional.
VERSION:
This command lists the program
name, version number, date, my name
and my CompuServe number if you would
like to leave me any complaints or
suggestions.
DRIVE [drivename]:
Typed by itself, this command
displays the current default drive
name. The name can be up to 49 char-
acters long and is initially set to
"DSK1." It could be changed to read
something like "DSK.RAMDISK.", in
which case it would address the disk
named "RAMDISK". Hopefully (although
I could not test it) it could be
changed to "HDS1.SUBDIR1.SUBDIR2."
The drive name must end with a period
character.
If the command is followed by
text, that text becomes the default
drive name. The default drive name
can be abbreviated by "." when it is
the first character of a string. This
will be explained more fully in the
descriptions of other commands.
PRINTER [printername]:
Typed alone, this command will
display the current default printer.
Again the name can be up to 49 char-
acters long. It is initially set to
"PIO" but can be any valid file name
or a disk name(e.g. "DSK1.").
If the command is followed by
text, that text becomes the default
printer name. The default printer
name can be abbreviated by "," when it
is the first character of a string.
This will be explained more fully in
the descriptions of other commands.
CATALOG [drivename] [printername]:
This command catalogs a drive.
Alone it displays the default drive's
catalog to the screen. If it is fol-
lowed by text, that text is assumed to
be the name of the drive to catalog,
for example, "CATALOG DSK2.", or maybe
"CATALOG ." (though the latter just
catalogs the default drive, so the "."
is unneccessary), or maybe "CATALOG ,"
(if you had set the default printer
name to something like "DSK1.").
If the command is followed by
two text strings, it will assume the
first is a drive name and the second
is a printer name. Thus the command
"CATALOG DSK.RAMDISK. RS232" will
print the catalog of the disk named
"RAMDISK" to the RS232 and the command
"CATALOG .," will print the catalog
of the default drive to the default
printer.
TYPE filename [printername]:
"TYPE .file" will type a DV80
file named "file" from the default
drive onto the screen. If there is a
second text string, it is assumed to
be the printer name. So, the command
"TYPE .file PIO" will print the file
named "file" from the default drive to
the parallel printer.
RENAME name [filename]:
RENAME will change the name of
a file or a disk. For example, the
command "RENAME DSK1.RAMDISK" will
change the name of the disk in drive
one to "RAMDISK". When there is a
second string, the command will rename
a file. "RENAME .TEMP perm" will
rename the file "TEMP" on the default
drive to "perm".
Only the first file name is
preceded by the drive name.
This command requires a drive
name of the form "DSKx.", where "x" is
a single digit. While some T-SHELL
commands can use names such as
"DSK.RAMDISK.", others require the
disk number to access DSR subroutines
to perform their function.
PROTECT filename:
This command protects a file.
"PROTECT DSK2.FILE" will mark the file
named "FILE" on DSK2 as protected.
This command requires a drive
name of the form "DSKx."
UNPROTECT filename:
This command unprotects a file.
"UNPROTECT DSK2.FILE" will clear the
protection flag on the file named
"FILE" on DSK2.
This command requires a drive
name of the form "DSKx."
COPY source destination:
This command will copy a file
or a disk. If the names are of the
form "DSKx.", T-SHELL will attempt to
copy the named disk. Otherwise, it
will copy the named file.
This command requires a drive
name of the form "DSKx."
SWEEP diskname:
This command will delete all
files from a disk. The target disk
disk must be explicitly identified.
This command can be quite destructive
if used carelessly. It will not give
you a chance to back out, so don't
type it unless you mean it.
This command requires a drive
name of the form "DSKx."
Modifying T-SHELL Defaults:
The commands, default drive and
default printer names have initial
values that suit me. If they don't
suit you, they can be changed with a
sector editor. For instance, you may
want to change "CATALOG" to "CAT" or
"DIR". Commands must be uppercase and
must be exactly ten characters long.
Shorter commands are to be filled out
with spaces. The default drive name
and default printer name can be up to
49 characters long, and must be fol-
lowed by a null character.
I hope you get some use out of
these utilities, and you may feel
free to use them however you wish,
but please don't change any of the
VERSION information including my
name. I do not want any money for
this product, but I do want the
credit.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^--Travis Watford
.PL 1