PsL Monthly 1994 October/pslmonthlyvol2-10utilitiesoctober1994.iso/pastnews/news9404.vws

Text File | 1994-03-16 | 23KB | 567 lines

=====News & Views <psl_logo.pcx>


Contents:

-----DOS & Windows Utilities
-----Does Not Compute... (Bug Reports)
-----Missing Authors
-----Retail Products

============================

-----DOS & Windows Utilities

This month's CD-ROM contains all the utility programs in the
library for both DOS and Windows, in addition to the 850 new
programs written up in this issue. So this seems like a good time
to provide everyone with an overview of the utilities in the
library. For the benefit of those who do not get the CD, we have
included the disk numbers.

The Utilities sections are the most extensive in PsL. We can
only give you a flavor in this limited space. For complete write-
ups of all the programs, see the U1-*, U2-*, WI-06, WI-09, and
WI-9A sections of the Reviews Disks or the TXT files in the
UTILS directory of this month's CD.

We will look at the DOS utilities first.

---Archiving:

Archiving programs can compress one or more files into a
single archive file. This has two very valuable benefits: to keep
sets of files together so that related files do not get lost and to
reduce by an average of 50% the amount of disk space used.

The two most popular archivers at this time are LHA (for-
merly known as LHarc) and PK-Zip, both of which are in Mega-
Disk Set #27059 with some related utilities.

A regular archive file has a filename extension, such as ARJ,
LZH or ZIP, which indicates the program used to archive the files.
This is because the same (or compatible) program must be used to
extract the files from the archive when you want to use them.

If an archive file has an extension of EXE or COM, it is called
a self-extracting archive because no other program is required to
extract the contents. When you run a self-extracting archive, it
dearchives itself, just as the name says.

Once you have dearchived files from an archive, you no
longer need the archive file and can delete it. On the other hand,
dearchiving an archive does not delete the files from the archive,
it simply copies them out and expands them, so if you keep the
original archive, you can dearchive it again if something happens
to the original files.

If you have programs or other types of files which you do not
want to delete from your hard disk but which take up a lot of
space and are rarely used, you could keep them archived and only
dearchive them when you need to use them.

A drawback to archiving files to save disk space is that you
have to dearchive the files before you can use them. An alterna-
tive to archiving for program files (those with EXE or COM
extensions) is to use a program compressor such as LZEXE,
TinyProg, ComPack, Diet, or PKLite (all of these are also part of
MegaDisk Set #27059 for $6.99).

These programs will compress program files but still allow
you to run them. In fact, compressed programs load faster
because reading from disk is slow and less data has to be read
from disk.

There are countless utilities for working with archiving pro-
grams, but the most popular are those which provide a menu-
driven interface for the archivers, which are command-line
driven themselves. MegaDisk set #27472 has such popular shells
as ArcMaster and SHEZ.

We also have utilities for handling old, outdated archive for-
mats which you might still run across and for handling archive
from Macintosh computers.

---Anti-Virus:

Not much has to be explained about viruses - the popular
press has gone overboard in spreading the word about them,
along with many myths. Be sure to see the file MYTHS on disk
#1513 for a balanced view.

There are a number of popular virus checkers, such as F-Prot
(#3675), Integrity Master (#3951), and McAfee's (MegaDisk Set
#27397).

---Batch File Utilities:

Batch files are actually little programs - a set of instructions
carried out by the computer. There are even utilities which let you
compile your batch files - convert them from straight text into
machine code so that they run faster and cannot be changed. (See
TurboBat on #12164.)

Because of the limited number of commands which DOS sup-
ports in batch files, writing batch files is much easier than learn-
ing a real programming language. Utilites in PsL's Batch File
section let you add many powerful features to your batch files,
but do not increase the difficulty of writing batch files.

These utilities let you get input from users (#1008), play
sounds & speech (#1146), display fancier screens (#2162,
#4224), get and act upon information about the system configura-
tion (#0271 & #2394), and much more.

To learn how to write batch files, get the Batch File Tutorial
on disk #0242 and also look in your DOS manual. Studying
installation and other batch files which come with shareware pro-
grams is another good way to learn.

---Disk & Drive Utilities:

If you are a shareware author or have some other reason to
make a lot of copies of one disk, you will definitely be interested
in programs such as DiskDupe (#1939) which have an option of
making an image of your master floppy, including boot sectors,
on your hard disk and making disk copies from that, including
formatting new disks if needed.

Fordsk (also on #1364) is a very powerful floppy disk format-
ter. In addition to normal high-speed disk formatting, it will let
you specify cluster size, hidden sectors, and much more. This
could let you create copy-protected diskettes if you can program
in a low-level language.

Disk #2459 has a number of interesting disk formatters.
BGFRMAT formats disks in the background. FDRead format
disks beyond their rated capacities.

Combi-Disk (on #1150) lets you set up a RAM disk and disk
cache in the same area of extended memory.

---Directory Listers & Editors:

Everyone should have a sorted directory lister. Utilities like
HotDIR Plus display files sorted in 1, 2, 4, or 6 columns, using
colors to indicate different types of files.

If you want to actually write the sorted directory back to disk,
CSap (on #1675) may be the best utility around for that purpose.
It is infinitely easier to use than Norton's directory sorter, for
example.

---File Changing, Copying, and Deleting:

Utilities in this section, such as Textcon on #0781, let you
clean up files by removing junk characters from them, convert
files from one format to another, change data files from fixed for-
mat to delimited, etc. This section also includes utilities for com-
paring two files (#1440)

Disk #0784 has a variety of utilities which let you copy files
with a number of options, but perhaps the most essential type of
utility on the disk is a file mover, which lets you move a file
between directories on your hard disk without having to copy
then delete it. BCMove is one of the best of that type.

Disk #1441 lets you delete files with verification, based on
file dates, deleting all BUT specified file types, and much more.
Trash-It is a unique utility which can let you recall files that have
been deleted, even if Undelete utilities will not work.

Disk #2000 contains programs for splitting large files onto
multiple floppies and reuniting them. Disk #1190 has file sorting
utilities which far outshine DOS's SORT.EXE. Disk #0425 con-
tains file and sector editors. Disk #1713 contains many file
encryption utilities.

---File Cataloging:

Keeping track of files on the countless floppies you have lay-
ing around is much easier with one of the disk catalog programs
in this section. DiskCat and CatDisk (no relation), InteliCat, and
PMCat+ are are on MegaDisk Set #27338.

---File Managers:

Anyone who works in DOS should have a file manager. The
best ones let you see two or more sorted directories at once, mak-
ing it easy to compare them, copy files between them, etc.
CM_Filer (#3541) is a very good one.

File managers also make it easy to work in a single directory.
You can mark files for mass deletion, copying, viewing, and so on.

---Hard Disk Utilities:

Utilities like Duplicate File Locator (#3470) make it easy to
clean up your hard disk. Flexibak Pl