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1991-03-15
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HELP(1)
MS-DOS utilities
HELP(1)
NAME
HELP - obtain help on DOS commands
SYNOPSIS
help
[
-1facpbqhP
] [
-i[n]
] [
-k|K
keyword ...] [keyword
... ]
DESCRIPTION
Help
is a program to retrieve and display entries from a
help file. It can operate in a full screen interactive
browsing mode, or a command line mode which writes only to
standard output and should work on generic MSDOS computers.
The helpfiles are pure ascii and can easily be edited and
extended for local variations in commands.
INTERACTIVE HELP
If
help
is entered without any commands specified, it enters
a full screen interactive help browsing mode. A window is
placed on the screen with a sorted list of all available
help entries. There is always one entry highlighted, and
pressing <return> will retrieve help entry for this item.
If environment variable PAGER is defined, it is assumed to
be a program to be used for displaying the help entry,
otherwise the entry is copied directly to the screen.
Options allow the action to be customised for you favourite
pager. A program used for the PAGER must be able to read
from a pipe. Selection from the list continues until <ESC>
is pressed.
NOTE: use of a PAGER variable may slow the response. This
can be helped by placing the PAGER program in a RAM disk,
and the path set to include this. The command processor
(COMMAND.COM or other) is not used for this (PAGER is
executed directly) When interactive mode is used, the screen
will be saved and restored after use. In addition, the
temporary file necessary for this operation may be placed in
a RAM disk by setting variable TMPDIR or TMP to a suitable
location.
The following keys are recognised in interactive mode:
<return>
select the current item <space>
<up>
move current line up or down, scrolling as needed
<down>
<home>
jump to beginning and end of list, respectively <end>
<pageup> <pagedown>
scroll the list one window at a time
Page 1 (printed 2/15/91)
HELP(1)
MS-DOS utilities
HELP(1)
A-Z
alphabetic keys will scroll the list to the first entry
beginning with the letter you type, or the following
entry if none matches
F1
pop up a help window describing key actions
F2
toggle between displaying name, or full synopsis line
F3
toggle synopsis line on current item only
F4
extract a list of cross references from the current
item, and open a new selection window. This can be
used recursively
F10
window goes into move/resize mode. Use arrow keys to
move it, shift-arrows to resize left and bottom edges,
<esc> or F10 to continue (see below)
<ESC>
Exit the program and restore screen
Moving/Resizing the Window:
The window containing the list of keywords can be moved or
resized by pressing F10. This ability is for the benefit of
other programs that call
help
as a child process, with a
custom help file. The window can be moved and resized with
the following keys:
arrow keys:
move window 1 space at a time in the appropriate
direction
control-arrow keys:
move window to extreme edge of screen in the
appropriate direction
shift-arrow keys
resize by dragging right and bottom edges of the window
control-shift-arrow keys
resize by moving right and bottom edges maximum
possible distance
<ESC>
redraw window in the current position and continue with
program
F10
Page 2 (printed 2/15/91)
HELP(1)
MS-DOS utilities
HELP(1)
redraw window in the current position and continue with
program, but attempt to "lock" window position so that
a subsequent call to this program will use the new
window position. This function uses the
"Interapplication Communication Area" (ICA) in the BIOS
data block. If any other program is also using the ICA,
help will NOT overwrite it's contents. The ICA may
contain garbage when the machine is first booted, so a
small program (clearica.com) is provided to fill the
ICA with zeroes. The ICA is not documented in the PS/2
BIOS and this function may not work. Using F10 should
not cause problems with the PS/2, but clearica may
cause problems. The sub-windows use with the F4 (cross
reference) command may be moved but not locked.
OPTIONS
(apply to interactive mode only)
-c
screen clear between each display. Use this if you
specify a pager which does not clear the screen before
starting.
-K key key ...
apropos keyword (see below) with interactive browsing.
The list displayed for selection contains only those
items which contain one of the keywords in the
synopsis.
-p
pauses after each display. Use this if you specify a
pager that does not pause at the end of the file (e.g.
DOS MORE)
-q
quiet mode - flash instead of beeping
-b
bios used for screen output instead of directvideo (use
if compatiblity problems arise with default action)
COMMAND LINE HELP
If the format
help command
is used, then the helpfile is
searched for "command", and if found, it is printed to
standard output (or piped through program %PAGER). Multiple
commands may be listed and they will be searched for in
order.
If the format
help -k keyword
is used, the 1-line synopses
for each help entry are searched for "keyword" and all those
that match are copied to standard output.
The command line help uses pure DOS i/o and should work on
any generic MS-DOS machine, including non-IBM compatibles.
Page 3 (printed 2/15/91)
HELP(1)
MS-DOS utilities
HELP(1)
OPTIONS
(apply to non-interactive mode)
-i
Print index of entries in help file. If followed by a
number <n>, print <n> keywords per line (default 5).
-1
Print single file index of entries in help file, with
no header
-k key key ...
Print synopsis of all entries related to <keyword>. All
command line arguments after -k are taken to be
keywords for synopsis search rather than entries to
display full text for. The synopsis search is
simpleminded, no regular expressions or boolean
combinations of keywords.
-P
Pipe output through program %PAGER if defined. This is
always used for interactive selection, and may be
applied to command line arguments with the -P option.
This is equivalent to
"help command | %PAGER"
-f
Force rebuild of index files
-h
Print 1 page summary of program
-a
Ansi_mode. Do NOT enter interactive mode if no
commands are listed (for use on machines for which this
causes trouble). If no commands are listed, then
"HELP" is looked up instead.
DESCRIPTION of HELPFILES
The helpfile consists of one or more ascii files, with the
index words (and aliases) marked as explaied below. The
files are treated effectively as though concatenated. An
index is built and stored in a separate file whenever
help
detects that the index is out of date with respect to the
helpfile. The helpfile may be edited with any text editor.
The file supplied has brief descriptions of most of the
MSDOS 4.01 and earlier commands. A 1-line description of
every help entry is also stored in the index file. This may
be searched for keywords by using the "apropos" command:
help
-k
keyword
The commands and keywords are not case sensitive. All
output is to standard output which may be redirected to a
file or printer. Some of the longer entries exceed one
screen and may be piped through "more" or any other pager.
Page 4 (printed 2/15/91)
HELP(1)
MS-DOS utilities
HELP(1)
The default directory for the help file is the directory in
which the executable (help.exe) is located. This may be
overridden by setting the environment variable HELPDIR
The default name for the help file is "helpfile". This may
be overridden by setting the environment variable HELPFILE.
HELPFILE may contain a list of file names separated by ";"
and
HELP
will cycle through each in turn. This allows help
files for different types of programs to be maintained in
logical groupings, but searched as if they were a single
file. They must all reside in the same directory. If any
files are not present, a diagnostic will be displayed but
the others will be processed.
The index file for each help file is created by appending
.idx to the data file name. The data file should therefore
have no extension.
The format for the help files is:
keyword [,alias ,alias ...] [#xref #xref ...]
keyword - 1 line description to be used by the -k option
...
any number of lines of text, up to EOF or next # at start of
line ...
keyword
- primary index for this help entry
alias
- alternate index terms for this help entry
#xref
- keywords prepended by "#" are cross-references used
by the F4 command in interactive mode. All items on the
index line are space or comma delimited, and the line
may be up to 134 characters.
In all of the descriptions of command usage:
[brackets]
indicates optional items.
indicates that the previous parameter may be repeated.
d:
represents a valid drive letter (with colon)
path
represents a directory path
filename
is a DOS filename (with extension)
Page 5 (printed 2/15/91)
HELP(1)
MS-DOS utilities
HELP(1)
filespec
is a DOS filename optionally with "*" and "?" wildcards
nnn
is generally a numeric parameter to be supplied
The help files use the format in the MKS toolkit help, of
which this was originally a clone. See the documentation
file for more information
FILES
helpfile default datafile containing help info
helpfile.idx default index file
HELPDIR Environment variable - directory for helpfile
HELPFILE Environment variable - alternate name(s) for
helpfile
PAGER Program to use for displaying help entries
HELP If set, is parsed as a command line argument before the
other arguments. This allows setting of default options.
COLOR Environment variable - if set, is parsed as for the
4DOS COLOR command and used to set the screen colours for
the interactive selection windows. The syntax is "fg ON bg"
where fg and bg are foreground and background colours taken
from the from the list "BLACK BLUE GREEN CYAN RED MAGENTA
YELLOW GRAY". For example, COLOR=BLUE ON YELLOW
BUGS
It would be useful if the last help entry viewed were to
remain on the screen at exit. Since the help program has no
control over which pager is used, this is not always
possible. It is also not possible to preserve the screen
when recursive calls are made to the cross-reference
feature. In general, for any given pager, the best
combination of -c and -p options will need to be determined
empirically.
AUTHORS
Original Author: uwmacc!harvard!killer!wnp (Wolf Paul)
Environment variable handling by: plocher@uwspan.uucp (John
Plocher)
Addition of all -options, interactive mode, multiple
helpfiles and pretty much rewrote everything.
richard@calvin.ee.cornell.edu
(Richard Brittain) School of Electrical Engineering,
Engineering and Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
14853
Code for the popen/pclose routines was taken from a BBS and
it bears no author name.
Permission is granted to copy and use the compiled program
and documentation for any non-commercial use, provided all
copyright information is retained.
Page 6 (printed 2/15/91)
HELP(1)
MS-DOS utilities
HELP(1)
Copyright 1990 by Richard Brittain