Cream of the Crop 11/Cream of the Crop 11-1.iso/disk/eddy8b.zip/EDDY_WHY.DOC

Text File | 1995-12-29 | 11KB | 199 lines

                                 Why Use EDDY?
                                 -------------

    Modestly billed as "THE WORLD'S GREATEST DISK UTILITY!", EDDY lets you do
    just about ANYTHING you ever wanted to disks, directories and files, plus
    a lot of things you probably never thought of!  Common stuff (find, copy,
    rename, patch, view, zap, etc.) is generally easier than with other tools;
    features you seldom need are LIFESAVERS when you do.

    With EDDY around, you can eliminate many of the small, special-purpose
    utilities which are so indispensable to the non-EDDY user.  So as a bonus,
    you get to free up some disk space -- or at least, get back some of what
    installing EDDY consumes.

    The current EDDY is a greatly-improved version of the program reviewed in
    "PC World (HK)", "Computer Language", "MicroCornucopia", and "PC Sources"
    magazines.  Some quotes from those reviews...

                             "...world-class product"
                         "The interface ... is elegant."
                  "...clean, easy-to-use, well-written program."
              "...quality of product we've seen from Peter Norton."
       "the commands are extensive, the written documentation is excellent"
      "...does things that Norton and Central Point haven't even thought of"

    EDDY has an intuitive, convenient interface for the common operations,
    such as disk/directory/file management, file viewing, etc.  Most of the
    things you frequently need to do take only a keystroke or two.  But EDDY
    also addresses a number of problems which arise less often but are more
    difficult to solve, if possible at all, with other utilities.

    EDDY features full buzzword compliance:
    -  Pull-down menus
    -  Context-sensitive HELP
    -  "Prune and Graft"
    -  "Point and Shoot"
    -  Configurability
    -  Mouse support
    -  LAN support
    -  (and of course, "user friendliness" and "ease of use")

    Below are some examples of the neat stuff you can do with EDDY.  Complete
    understanding of the examples may require using EDDY, or (horrors!)
    reading some of the User's Manual.  I hope these will interest you enough
    that you'll give EDDY a try.

    If you know of programs that do things easier or better than EDDY, please
    let me know, so I can stop making dubious claims (or maybe improve EDDY).
    On the other hand, if you find some more neat ways to use the program, or
    have any ideas for enhancements, I'd like to hear about them.

    Consider...

    ...Are you a secret agent?  EDDY has features for people with high
       security needs.  The "destroy" command conforms to the U.S.  government
       specs for destruction of files, to ensure that even special-purpose
       equipment cannot recover the data that was previously stored there.

       Or, conversely, if you want to snoop in someone ELSE'S electronic
       dumpster, EDDY can help, too.  You can create a file containing all
       currently-unallocated (but perhaps previously allocated to sensitive
       data files) sectors on a disk:  LOOK at the disk, and press [^u].  You
       may browse in the file, or whatever you like.

    ...If you want to keep track of changes made to your directories (by other
       people, installation programs, viruses or whatever), use EDDY's
       "snapshot" feature.  Press [Shift+F5] on the top line to create a
       snapshot, and [Shift+F3] on the same line to see what changes have been
       made since the snapshot was taken.

       Snapshots can also be used to check which files get modified when you
       install a "Windows" application; take snapshots of your Windows
       directory and any subdirectories, install your application, then
       compare the snapshots to find out what was added or modified.

    ...Have you ever installed a new package and wondered what it was doing to
       your disk (watching the "busy" light blink), and then been unable to
       find the new or changed files?  (You didn't use the "snapshot" feature
       first, did you?).  Many programs create "hidden" files, in directories
       of their choice, on your disk.  You can find them by using EDDY's
       "Where's That File?" function combined with attribute filtering.

       Enter:  "eddy/w +H", and EDDY will search the whole disk for hidden
       files.

    ...Or maybe you'd like to know whether any new files were created or any
       of your files were changed by the program you just ran at (say) 9 PM on
       Sep.  14, 1994.  If you enter:  eddy/w/h c:\ ">09/14/94 08:59p" EDDY
       will find the files, whatever directory they're in, hidden or not.

    ...Would you like to organize your disk directory structure differently?
       Maybe move some directories to a different disk or partition?  Or just
       copy a directory to a floppy to take to the office (or home from
       there)?  EDDY will copy or move entire directories (and their
       subdirectories) to different parts of their current disk, OR TO ANY
       OTHER DISK.

    ...If you're running short of space on disk, even the amount of space used
       by the subdirectories themselves can be significant.  A directory
       always keeps all space that was ever allocated to it, even if all the
       files have been deleted.  EDDY will tell you how much space your
       directories occupy, if you turn on option /D.

       If you see that have some directories that take up a lot of space, but
       don't contain many files, you can reclaim the disk space that's no
       longer needed, with the "packing" feature.

    ...Have you got some big directories with a few very frequently accessed
       files (typical with Windows applications)?  You can speed up the
       average disk access time for those files by moving the directory
       entries to the beginning of the directory, using the "shuffling"
       feature.

    ...You don't have to worry whether you should be copying files from A: to
       B:, or from B: to A:, nor whether there's room for all the files you
       want to copy.  EDDY will tell you if there's not enough room before
       starting the copying, and warn you before copying a newer file over an
       older one.

    ...Did you ever lose a file because your only copy was on a disk that
       somehow developed a "bad spot", and couldn't be read?  With EDDY's COPY
       ([F5]) command, you can at least save all the GOOD data that's left,
       leaving out only the part of the file that's actually in the "bad"
       sector.  So you don't have to key in all that data or text again!

    ...Or maybe you have a disk with a bad spot and wonder which file (if any)
       on the disk is affected?  EDDY will tell you which file owns a
       particular sector:  LOOK at the disk -- [F3] on the "Drive is:" line of
       the display -- and [Alt+o] to find out the owner for any sector.

    ...Want to know the differences between two directories?  EDDY will TELL
       you (not just display the directories for you to compare to one
       another), if you press [Shift+^F3].

       EDDY will report whether a file is in the other directory or not; if it
       is, the relation between the timestamps -- newer, older, same, or even
       same timestamp but different size -- will be displayed as well.  You
       can stop to look at either file's contents, compare the data in the two
       files, copy, move, patch or delete them, and then continue on with the
       next file.

       You can also do the directory comparisons, and file copying, deleting,
       etc., based on the results of those comparisons, in batch mode.  Great
       for routine backups and directory cleanups!

    ...Windows "file association" capability can be very handy (allowing files
       to be tied to applications according to the filename extension).  With
       EDDY, this is even more powerful.  You may associate a file with an
       application or even SEVERAL applications, choosing the one you want
       with the "Point-n-Shoot" capability provided by the EDDY.USE file.

    ...EDDY's string-finding capabilities are powerful and easy to set up.
       You can find strings in one or more files (including binary files),
       anywhere in a directory tree -- even hyphenated words continued from
       one line to the next -- and you can use strings with a mixture of hex
       and ASCII if you want.  There's also a similarly powerful "FIND and
       REPLACE" capability.

       You can even find what ASCII strings may be lurking in a binary file:
       use a FIND for "??????", for example, and EDDY will show you all text
       strings of 6 bytes or longer.

    ...Are you annoyed by the extra command line prompt generated by DOS when
       you run a batch file?  You can use EDDY's PATCH function to truncate
       the batch file, deleting the final, line-terminating bytes (usually 3:
       carriage return, line feed and "right arrow") at the end of the file.
       With these bytes gone, the extra prompt won't be generated.  With big
       batch files, who knows?  You might even save a "K" or so of disk real
       estate, if your file was just over a cluster size boundary.

       You can chop bytes off the front or back of any file and you can add
       bytes -- for example, ^Zs -- at the end of any file.  Or you can expand
       all TAB characters in a file to the equivalent number of spaces (0 - 8,
       as you choose).

    ...Have you ever wanted to read or modify a file of text that was created
       by WordStar (tm), but that's not the word processor you use?  Hard to
       work with, wasn't it?  Well, with EDDY, you can not only read it easily
       on the screen, but you can convert it to pure ASCII, so you can use
       your favorite editor or word processor on it if you want.

    ...Would you like to send entire disks by modem, rather than just files?
       EDDY lets you copy an entire disk -- boot sector, FAT, directories and
       all -- to a file.  You can then compress the file, send it, and the
       receiver can recreate an exact copy of that disk (if he has a copy of
       EDDY, too!).

    ...When you have a long list of files that you want to process (say, you
       want to MASM most -- but not all -- the .ASM files), and you don't want
       to type in the commands one-by-one, the normal thing to do is build a
       multi-line batch file (or one with "FOR" statements) and execute it.

       With EDDY it's easier; just display the directory containing the files,
       (press [Alt+w], and enter "*.asm").  Then "Ignore" the ones you don't
       want ([Alt+F7]) and use the "Point-n-Shoot" capability ([Shift+F9]).
       Have a look at the EDDY.USE file included with this package to get a
       better picture of the power and potential of "Point-n-Shoot".