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Text File | 1994-06-24 | 22.3 KB | 488 lines

ALLIST v1.10 Page 1 Welcome to ALLIST ▄███████▄ ▄██▄ ▄██▄ ▄█▄ ▄███████▄ ▄██████████▄ ████▀▀▀████ ████ ████ █████ ████▀ ▀████ ▀▀▀▀████▀▀▀▀ ████▄▄▄████ ████ ████ █████ ▀█████▄▄ ████ ███████████ ████ ████ █████ ▀▀█████▄ ████ ████ ████ ████▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ████▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ █████ ████▄ ▄████ ████ ▀██▀ ▀██▀ ▀████████▀ ▀████████▀ ▀█▀ ▀███████▀ ▀██▀ The Ultimate Allfiles/Newfiles FILES.BBS lister for RA 2.xx version 1.10 Made by Uriel Segal Spirit Software Engineering Copyright (c) 1994 All Rights Reserved ┌── │ Shareware "rules": └──────────────────── 1. This software is distributed as Shareware. 2. If you try this program and continue to use it, you are expected to register with us in 10 days. 3. This software can be freely distributed, as long as no money is charged for it, and all the files are included, unmodified, and with their modification dates preserved. (commercial - see at ALLIST.REG) 4. This software cannot be distributed as a part of, or in conjunction with, another product without permission of the author. 5. Whether or not you use this product, please give complete copies of this software to others. 6. This software is provided "as-it-is" and without any warranties whatsoever. 7. In no event shall I, Uriel Segal, be liable for any indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages or any loss of business profits, business interruption, loss of business information, or other losses arising out of the use of or inability to use this software or accompanying written material, even if I have been advised of the possibility of such damages. ALLIST v1.10 Page 2 ┌── │ Introduction └────────────── ALLIST was designed to give a good answer to the RA 2.xx's FDB (FilesDataBase) utilities around. It seems that since the new FDB format was released, everybody forgot the goodness and the simplicity of the old FILES.BBS style, although in my opinion, it's much easier to manage, especially for those of us that have no intentions to "manage-the-world" through their BBS but enjoy the hobby or manage not-so-complicated Bulletin Board System. ALLIST was initially written to list out ALLFILES and NEWFILES files-list for my BBS's users, and as my BBS still keeps the FILES.BBS style under RA 2.01, it was hard to find around a good utility that will do it 100% perfectly with no tricks and several run-time errors, then ALLIST was borned. Later, I decided to enhance it a little and added more statistical options, orphand and missing-files reporter and headers-manager for each area using templates. After those enhancments, and after a long time I spent to cover any possibilty, I thought it would be worth to release it around, for you guys. I must say that the release was delayed long time because of one-thing, I was too lazy to write this documentation, actually I hate writing documentations and you can blame only my English teacher from highschool, several years ago ;-) ┌── │ Features └────────── - Creates ALLFILES.LST - Creates NEWFILES.LST - Full support for '+' style long-descriptions - {+} Creates GROUPxx.LST for each group. Registered only. - Creates statistics files - Creates straying-files (orphan) report - Creates MISSING-files report - Full errors-handling. Reports to ALLIST.ERR with details - Share-support. May run while your BBS is online. - Full INCLUDE/EXCLUDE areas/groups. RAFILE's compatible. - External CTL file support. Optional. - Flexible output file-names - Support for American, European and ANSI date formats - Headers support using ALLIST.HDR header-templated file - Global list header/footer with template-vars support - Ability to remove any previous headers - Full justification support if there are download-counters - On-line quick options-reference - Easy operation. No configuration file! - Fast and informative interface - All the above options IN ONE RUN! ALLIST v1.10 Page 3 ┌── │ Installation └────────────── As I said before, this program needs no installations, but only these little things: 1. Make sure 'RA' environment variable is set correctly and points to the *.RA configuration files. 2. If you like to use the 'headers-manager', you will better prepare your own header-template file (ALLIST.HDR), otherwise, ALLIST will use its own internal header. 3. That's it, you see? very easy ... ┌── │ Operational └───────────── Running ALLIST with no command-line parameters will force ALLIST to use its own internal defaults to create an ALLFILES list. No security-level checks will be done and no other files rather than ALLFILES.LST will be created, covering all the BBS files-areas, including your hidden areas if you have any. This is not recommended. I DO recommend to take 2 minutes to read about the ALLIST command-line parameters, so it will suit your requirments from the program. syntax: Allist <option> <option> <option> ... ALLIST v1.10 Page 4 ┌── │ Options └───────── /SECnnn - Limits the lists to a specified security level. Replace the 'nnn' with the security-level number (e.g. /SEC20) in order to include in the list - only areas with the 'nnn' security-level or below. The 'nnn' level is compared against the 'List security' in each area-record. /MINSEC - Limit the minimum-security level required for an area/group to be processed. Use in conjunction with '/SEC' command to limit the lists-security in a specific range. (eg. /minsec5 /sec20 - will process only areas/groups with the list security-level bewteen 5 and 20, including 5 and 20!). /NEWddd - Create also a NEWFILES list for the last 'ddd' days (e.g. /NEW30 for the last 30 days). /CNTccc - Justify long descriptions righter 'ccc' columns in case of download counters. (e.g. '[052]' counter will require the /CNT5) /GROUPS - Create also GROUPxxx.LST files-list for each group. Enable your users to download only their interesting-groups-list rather that the LARGE ALLFILES.LST. ALLIST v1.10 Page 5 /ADDHDR - This powerful option will put a header at the begining of each FILES.BBS. By default, the header contains few lines with summary results about the current area. BUT you can create your own-style header using templates with the hard- coded 'ALLIST.HDR' file. If this file is presented at the directory where ALLIST.EXE runs from, ALLIST will make use of this file instead of its default. Please refer to the 'Template comments' paragraph for additional important comments. /ADDHDR will also remove any previous header from the FILES.BBS before adding a new one, you should not be worried about double-header problem, as this will never gonna happen, okay? /REMOVEHDR - Tired of FILES.BBS headers? any headers? no problem, this option will remove any header from the FILES.BBS while creating files-lists. /DATEFMTx - Sets the Date format that will be used in the files-lists, while 'x' stands for: 0 - American 1 - European 2 - ANSI (Japan, etc ..) Default is 1. ALLIST v1.10 Page 6 /RAMxsss - This option was designed to manage a buffer on an existing RAMDrive in your system in-order to increase the run-time speed dramatically. This option uses a method a I developped myself, a smart one, and passed all my tests successfully. /RAM option requires the following values: 'x' (RAMDrive letter) and 'sss' (buffer-size in KB to be used). For example: /RAMH300 will manage a 300k buffer on the RAMDrive H:. Once the buffer gets filled-up, a fast procedure will copy/add it to the regular output file on your hard-disk. If the buffer will run out of "disk"-space in the RAMDrive, the copy procedure should handle it just fine, but don't count on this - setup a realistic buffer size as explained below. This /RAM method will be used for ALLFILES.LST, NEWFILES.LST and GROUPxxx.LST only. The 'sss' (buffer-size) given-value is ment for EACH of the above files. so if you have 900k free on H: and you generate only ALLFILES.LST, you can set the buffer to 900k, but if you generate all the above three-files, you will have to set the buffer to 300k (300k * 3 = 900k). If only a drive-letter has been specified (eg. /RAMH) the default buffer-size is 100k. NOTICE: As large as you will use the buffer- size, the program will work faster! /MISSING - Manage/report a seperate list of all the MISSING file in your files-base. The list will be created into ALLIST.MIS. Each record will contain the Area#, Area-name and the missing- filename. ALLIST v1.10 Page 7 /STRAY - Create a seperate list of all the straying (orphan) files in your files-base (i.e. files that exist in the directories but don't appear in the FILES.BBS). The list will be created in ALLIST.STR. Each record will contain the area#, orphan-filesize, orphan-full-path/filename. NOTICE: This option slows down the run-time of the program. Use it only manually once a week and not in your daily batch-process. /BAK - Create backup of your FILES.BBS before processing each-area. The FILES.BBS will be copied to the current directory as FILES.xxx (xxx = area#). It's strongly suggested to use this option only once a month in order to keep a backup of all of your FILES.xxx in an archive. /STATUS - Create also 'ALLIST.STT' statistics file. ALLIST v1.10 Page 8 /INCLUDE, /EXCLUDE - Using these options you can INCLUDE/EXCLUDE quite fexibility the areas/groups you want to list/de-list. Added 'INCLUDE' and 'EXCLUDE' options. Each option should follow either the areas/groups to include/exclude or an external- text-file containing this information. The format of the Include/Exclude is: nn - An area to include/exclude nn-dd - Range of areas to include/exclude gnn - A group to include/exclude Examples: 30 48 210 <-- will include/exclude areas 30, 48 and 210 12-19 47 <-- will include/exclude the areas from 12 to 19 and area 47. g30 <-- will include/exclude the whole group 30. The include/exclude parameters could be used in any combination. You've got only 2 restrictions: 1. When using those options from the command- line, the parameters must be assigned in an external file. While when using those options from the ALLIST.CTL, the parameters could be assigned in either an external file (eg. Include @areas.lst) or directly from the rest of the line (eg. Exclude g30 50-67 148). 2. 'Exclude' has NO EFFECT if it comes BEFORE the 'Include', as include command resets the areas-setting before making any change. ALLIST v1.10 Page 9 To get it short: For you that know the RemoteAccess RAFILE's external include/exclude file format, ALLIST uses the SAME FORMAT. /? or /H - Display on-line help screen HINT: All the command-line parameters, EXCEPT OF THOSE THAT REQUIRE VALUES (like: SEC, NEW, CNT, DATEFMT, RAM, INCLUDE, EXCLUDE), can be entered partially. (eg. /ADDHDR can be entered as /ADDH, /ADD or even /A). Notice that when using this, /ST for example, will enable both /STatus and /STray. ┌── │ External control file └─────────────────────── ALLIST provide a support, optionally, for an external configuration file that will be used instead of typing all the long command-line parameters at each run. The control file is named 'ALLIST.CTL' and should be placed at the directory when ALLIST.EXE runs from in-order to be used at run-time. ALLIST.CTL (enclosed an example as SAMPLE.CTL) can contain all the regular command-line parameters without the slash (ie. '/') plus some more options: ALLfile <filename> - Change the default output filename of the ALLFILES.LST to your own unique name. NEWfile <filename> - Change the default output filename of the NEWFILES.LST to your own unique name. GROUPfile <fname> - Change the default output filenames of the GROUP???.LST to your own unique name. (eg. 'GROUPfile RANGR' will generate RANGR???.LST files-lists when using the /GROUP option, instead of GROUP???.LST). ALLIST v1.10 Page 10 INCLUDE/EXCLUDE - These options work different in the control file rather in the command-line options (read the explanation above about thos option before you keep on). In order to make them use an external include/exclude file, as in the command -line, you should use the '@' symbol right before the filename. (eg. INCLUDE @areas.lst). Instead of using an external @areas.lst you can define the areas/groups to include/exclude directly from the include/exclude commands. (eg. INCLUDE 12-50 167 g35 - will include only the areas 12 to 50, area 167 and the whole group 35). The INCLUDE/EXCLUDE commands may be used only once in the control file. If more than one of those commands will appear, the last one will be considered. ALLIST v1.10 Page 11 ┌── │ Template comments └─────────────────── ALLIST will use the ALLIST.HDR file as a header-file for each FILES.BBS. This file can contain template variables that will be replaced with parameters at run-time. Currently, only 4 parameters are being used, if you have any ideas for more, please let me know. var will be replaced by ... length ─── ─────────────────────────────────────────── ──────── @AN - full current area-name 40 chars @SF - total-files in the current area 7 chars @SB - total-bytes in the current area 12 chars @LS List-security of current area 5 chars @DS Download-security of current area 5 chars @BN BBS system-name 30 chars @BA BBS network address 13 chars @SN Sysop name 35 chars @A# Number of current area 3 chars @G# Number of current group 3 chars @GN Name of current group 40 chars NOTICE: It's important to keep the required 'length' space of each template empty-with-spaces, as each 'var' will be replaced with its full-length, despite the parameter could be shorter. for example, @SB is 12-chars long, the following: '@SB total-bytes in the area' will be replaced by: ' 176543tes in the area' |----------| 12 chars hmmmm, no-good :-( therefore, you will better use: '@SB total-bytes in the area' or 'Total-bytes in the area: @SB' In any case, I've included in the package, a sample header file which you may modify and use freely. ALLIST v1.10 Page 12 ┌── │ Global header/footer └────────────────────── ALLIST can optionally have global header/footer files that will be inserted automatically, if found, at the begining/end of the ALLFILES.LST. The filenames are hard-coded: ALLIST.GHD - Global header file ALLIST.GFT - Global footer file Both of the files can contain the regular template-vars as listed above and should be placed in the directory when ALLIST.EXE runs from in-order to be used at run-time. ALLIST v1.10 Page 13 ┌── │ Comments └────────── If you have any comments, improve-suggestions or if you just want to bother the author (beware!), I could be reachable in one of the following e-mail addresses: fidonet 2:402/77 ranet 73:7721/77 virnet 9:9722/101 internet uriel@jerusalem1.datasrv.co.il uriel.segal@f77.n402.z2.fidonet.org ┌── │ Registration └────────────── Please see ALLIST.REG or NL.REG for further details. At the moment there are support-sites only in Israel and the Netherlands, each *.REG for each support-site.