Cream of the Crop 1

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Text File | 1992-02-26 | 14KB | 411 lines

RCD version 1.5 (Ray's Change Directory) by Ray Van Tassle 1020 Fox Run Lane Algonquin, Ill, 60102 (708)-658-4941 February 7, 1992 RCD program and manual copyright(c) 1990-1992 by Ray Van Tassle. Abstract: RCD is a set of programs to let you change the default disk/directory quickly & easily, in a "do what I mean" manner. You can specify all or part of the name of the directory you want to go to, and RCD will do it's best to figure out which directory you mean, and on which disk. And with the new systems being delivered with 100+ MB disks standard, you can potentially have a lot of drives, both physical & logical (drives in DOS extended partitions, and in STACKER & SPEEDSTOR compressed volumes). RCD is a companion (but totally independent) program to WIZ, my lightning fast file finder. RCD is shareware, NOT freeware!!! You are granted a limited 21 day evaluation license. At the end of that period, you should either delete it and stop using it, or send in the registration fee of $15. QUICK-START ----------- For a quick start, so you don't have to read this manual, execute "RCDSCAN". Then you can change to ANY directory on any disk by typing "RCD" and all or part of the desired directory name. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS--and COMPARISION TO OTHER PROGRAMS --------------------------------------------------- Norton's NCD gave me the initial idea for writing RCD, along with ideas on improvement. NCD will only work on the current disk; it has a spiffy user display, but I consider it quite limited in terms of looking at other disks, and weak in finding approximate matches on directory names. Ledbetter's LCD is similar in function to RCD, but isn't quite as powerful in matching, is quite a bit slower in building the index (SCAN), and chokes on network drives that are configured, but off-line (I use both $25NETWORK & Fastlynx's EBOX). Time to build index (483 directories on 10 partitions (drives), no disk cache, 7 MHZ 286): RCDSCAN v1.5 LCD v4.00a NCD v4.50 ------------ ---------- --------- 17 seconds 130 seconds 170 seconds LCD does have the capability to do a MD & RD within itself, and make the corresponding change in the index file, but this must be invoked on the DOS command line; it doesn't work with directories created/deleted/renamed/moved internally within other shells or utilities. And RCDSCAN is so fast that it's not a big burden to run it after modifying your directory structure. Directory ordering ------------------ In my first cut at RCD, I didn't sort the directories, but just displayed them in arbitrary order. This was obnoxious, so I then sorted them alphabetically, for each disk. This is kind of like NCD does it, and is exactly the way that LCD does it. But I didn't like that either--it seemed to me that all the directories named "FOO" should be next to one another on the display, no matter what disk they were on. After thinking about it some more, a light dawned: a disk name is really a type of "super directory", especially when you consider large (200MB +) disks divided into several logical partitions. It doesn't make any more sense to group them by disk than it does to group them by parent-directory. So RCD sorts the directories strictly by name, no matter what the parent directory is (be it disk or normal directory). MANUAL ------ RCD is two programs and one data file. The programs are: RCDSCAN - Examines your disks, and builds a data-base containing the directory & disk names. RCD - The program to use in place of CD (or CDD) Command Line format and Switches -------------------------------- RCD [-?] [-p] [-r] [-l] [-m] [-w] directory-name As usual, the stuff inside the square brackets "[]" are optional and may be present or omitted. You do NOT include the brackets in your command line. The various fields and options may appear in any order, in either upper or lower case. The switch character can be either "-" or "/". If you just invoke RCD without any parameters, it gives you a brief help line and shows the current disk & directory. For more info, include '-?'. For even more, include '-??'. The parameter is all or part of the name of the directory you want to switch to. RCD uses the full (better than DOS) wildcard matching that WIZ uses: you can put "*" anywhere, and it matches zero or more characters, "?" matches exactly one character. RCD first looks for a directory name which is exactly the same as the parameter. If it does not find one, it looks for a directory that starts with what you gave. If it does not find one, it then looks for a directory with the characters you gave ANYWHERE in the name. To be more precise, if you said "RCD xyz", the patterns it uses for the match are: 1st try: "XYZ" 2nd try: "XYZ*" 3rd try: "*XYZ*" However, if you include any wildcard characters ("*" or "?"), then RCD will assume that you know what matching pattern you want, and will only do one try, using the exact pattern given. POPUP WINDOW ------------ It is possible that RCD will find more than one directory that satisfies it (for example, I have sub-directories named TRY and TEMP all over my disk). RCD will popup a scrolling window showing all the matching directory names. The cursor will be positioned as follows: If the current directory is NOT a match, the cursor will be on the first line. If the current directory IS a match, then the cursor will be on the next line after the current directory. You can scroll thru the list using the UP/DOWN arrows, and PAGEUP, PAGEDOWN, HOME, and END. Hit ENTER to switch to the highlighted directory. Hit ESC or CTRL/C to bail out. RCD recognizes when your display is set for more than 25 lines (43, 50, or other), and adjusts the number of lines in the window appropriately. -l Leaf directory -------------------- This switch says to only consider a directory that is a leaf (does not have any sub-directories below it). -p Parent directory ---------------------- This is the opposite of -l. It says to only consider a directory if it DOES have at least one sub-directory. -r Root directory -------------------- This says to only consider a directory if it is at the highest level--it's in the root directory of a disk. -m Monochrome display ------------------------ Use this to force a black & white display window. You may also force mono by putting "/m" in the WIZ environment variable. -w Don't do popup window --------------------------- Don't do a popup window if there are several matching directories. Instead, just switch to the "next" directory (according to the rules of positioning the cursor discussed above.) If you re-execute the exact same RCD command, it will step thru all the matching directories in sequence. ************************************************************************* RCDSCAN [-v] [-?] [disks] ----------------- You need to run RCDSCAN whenever you add, delete, move, or rename directories and/or drives. It builds a data-base file containing information about you disk and directory structure. The data base is sorted in alphabetical order, so when RCD shows several matching files, they will be in order, but by the name of the matching directory, NOT in tree order or in sorted order by directory level. This file is: "C:\RCD.IDX" Disk(s): --------------------------- You can specify the disk(s) you want it to scan, optionally followed by ":". It will look at those drives, in the order you listed them. If you list the same one twice, it will look at it twice. You can specify a range of disks by using a dash--"C-F" is the same as "CDEF". If you don't list any disks, it will look at all drives beginning with C. It will stop when it hits a drive that it cannot read. Processing Disk(s) and Environment Variable ------------------------------------------- You can override the disks that RCDSCAN looks at, and their order, by making an environment variable "WIZ". Do: "SET WIZ=floppy-disk-list:hard-disk-list". Example: "SET WIZ=AB:C-M". What actually happens is that RCDSCAN will try to read all the disks to the left of the colon, then all those to the right of the colon. Those on the left are deemed to be floppies, and will be ignored. Those on the right are deemed to be hard drives, and it will quit on the first one that it can't read. You may omit the "default" disk set by leaving a space after the "=". This is most useful when you need only to put the "/M" switch, as: "SET WIZ= /M". If you specify disks on the command line, it will try to read them all, even if it can't read one. The list may be discontiguous, (e.g., "C-FL-M"). This is mostly useful if you are on a network, which tends to make the networked disks at the higher letters, and leaves a hole before them. Pre-defined Drive Sets ---------------------- You can actually have several pre-defined sets of disks to search. If the disk-specifier on the command line is a single digit (0-9), it will look for that specifier in the WIZ variable. For example, you might say: "SET WIZ=AB:C-F 1=CDEG 2=AB: 3=C-Z 4=C-Z:" As above, those to the left of the colon are deemed floppies; those to the right are hard drives, and RCDSCAN will quit if it can't read one. However, if there isn't a colon, then they are ALL deemed to be hard drives. The command "RCDSCAN ", will look on ABCDEF. The command "RCDSCAN 1:", will look on CDEF. The command "RCDSCAN 2:", will look on AB. The command "RCDSCAN 3:", will look on all drives C-Z (and will quit at the first on that it can't read). The command "RCDSCAN 4:", will look on all drives C-Z (and it will attempt to read each and every one of them). The command "RCDSCAN 9:", will give an error message. -v Verbose ------------- If you have this flag once, RCDSCAN will print the disk name when it starts as it starts on a disk. If you have it twice (-vv), it will also print the name of each directory. This is mostly useful for troubleshooting, or to see a progress indication. It has been tested, and works, with DOS 3.x, including Zenith DOS 3.30, DOS 3.31, DOS 4.01, DOS 5.0, STACKER compressed pseudo-disks, and On-Track partitioning software. DOS 3.31, 4.01, and 5.0 have large (greater than 32MB) partitions with more than 65,536 sectors. Zenith DOS 3.30 and On-Track have large partitions by virtue of using large sectors (1024, 2048, or 4096 bytes, rather than 512 bytes). Error Messages -------------- "Can't tell if FAT-12 or FAT-16. Assuming FAT-16!" Just what it says. I've only seen this on networked disk drives. If you know how to RELIABLY tell what type of FAT a disk has (other than going thru DOS), please let me know. "malloc failed for FAT_buf!" Can't allocate memory to read a FAT block. Most likely an internal error. "malloc failed for dir_sec_buf!" Can't allocate memory to read in a directory sector. Most likely an internal error. "Sorry, out of memory!!!" You lose. "Can't open file:" Failure to open an archive file. Most likely a disk error. Run CHKDSK. "Non-existant directory, you should run RCDSCAN!" A directory is in the data-base, but does not exist on the disk. It was probably renamed or deleted, but you didn't run RCDSCAN after doing so. BUGS ---- No known bugs. However, RCDSCAN mostly does not use DOS to process a disk, so errors on my part, or a change in the disk structure might break it. If you are having problems, try 1) use the "-v" switch, to isolate the error to a specific disk, 2) use "-vv", to see as it hits each sub-directory. Then call or write me. Coming Attractions ------------------ * Ability to create, delete, rename, and move directories. * Plus other things I think of, or get suggested. This is shareware, so I'm probably more interested and receptive in hearing comments and suggestions than a commercial software publisher would be. Just send them in, or give me a call. I can't promise to fix bugs, or add specific features, but I'll listen to everything. Even if you're cheap and haven't registered. BBS Support & New Versions -------------------------- There is no "official" support BBS. However, I frequent a couple of local BBS's: Chicken Coop (708)658-1545 RIMENET =>THECOOP Emporium (708)551-4275 Update History -------------- 1.4 Initial public release 1.5 Changed to scrollable window display -------------------------- INVOICE / REGISTRATION -------------------------- Sold to: ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ Date: ______________________________ ============================================================ _____ copies of WIZ version ___ at $15 each $____________ _____ copies of RCD version 1.5 at $15 each $____________ DISCOUNT for registering both is $5 off. Total is $25 instead of $30 ____________ TOTAL ENCLOSED....... $____________ Where did you get your copy of RCD? Shareware distributor name:___________________ BBS name: ____________________ BBS phone #: ____________________ Send this invoice and your check to: Ray Van Tassle 1020 Fox Run Lane Algonquin, Il. 60102 (708)-658-4941 ============================================================= Thank you for your support ............... Ray Van Tassle