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Documentation - 1 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ UTIL Version 1.3 Copyright (c) 1983 Mutant Software ____ _________ ________ User Supported Software If you use this program and like it, your contribution of $10 would be greatly appreciated. Mutant Software Program UTIL P.O. Box 765 Bellaire, TX 77401 Regardless of whether you make a contribution or not, you are encouraged to copy and distribute this program to others, with the stipulation that this notice not be removed. If you do not have printed documentation, it resides on your distribution diskette under the name UTIL.DOC. Merely print this file to your printer. System requirements : 128K and DOS 2.0 or higher If you want to, you can order directly from me for $15. The extra $5 covers the diskette, the mailing cost, and documentation reproduction. By ordering direct, you are assured of getting the latest version of UTIL with the fewest bugs, and the latest enhancements. New features are being added regularly to this program, either at the suggestion of users, or as I see the need. I am open to suggestions for the enhancement of this program or to reports of any bugs. I would also like to hear of any ways that the documen- tation for this program can be made clearer. Please write to me at the above address. Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 2 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ 1. Program UTIL 1.1 Introduction UTIL is a general purpose collection of utilities for use under DOS 2.0. A given utility is invoked either directly from the command line (when invoking UTIL, or alternately from a screen menu. The screen menu option is gotten when you invoke UTIL with no options. The UTIL program should be kept in the root directory on all disks which you will want it's facilities on. Often, utility programs are written in assembler, and are very small (in file size). Generally, they are have only one function.A collec- tion of these utilities is difficult to haul around from disk to disk. UTIL was designed to handle that problem. It is one program with a variety of useful options. UTIL was written in C, using the Ci86 compiler from Computer Innovations. The C programming language generates very tight, fast code. But the overhead for a single program is large (mainly due to file I/O facilities). This makes C lack usefullness in generating small utility routines. The advantage of using C is that additional capabilities added to the original (large) core program produces very little increase in code size. In addition, C code is much easier to maintain than assembler. It is for this reason that UTIL has many utilities built into it. Some of the features of UTIL are much more useful than others. The directory option is by far the most useful. Look at what it can do carefully. This option also required the largest invest- ment in code (and resultant .EXE file size). 1.2 Time Tests In case you are worried about the time required to load UTIL, let me show you some times I recorded for loading and executing UTIL in the directory (SD) mode, compared to the DIR command. 1.2.1 Test Number 1. UTIL on floppy getting directory of floppy. DIR : 5.16 seconds, UTIL : 10.94 seconds 1.2.2 Test Number 2. UTIL on hard disk getting directory of hard disk. DIR : 4.12 seconds, UTIL : 6.78 seconds Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 3 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ 1.2.3 Test Number 3. UTIL on floppy getting directory of floppy. DIR : 4.6 seconds, UTIL : 7.47 seconds. Note that DIR and UTIL were accessing exactly the same directory information. The difference between Test 1 and Test 3 is that in Test 3, UTIL was copied to a clean (freshly formatted) diskette. In Test 1, the diskette already had had alot of activity with alot of files. This points out the advantage of copying the UTIL program (and any other programs you will use frequently) onto a fresh diskette- it will always load faster. In all cases, this is not a bad time, considering the con- siderable increase in power you get from UTIL over DIR. By the way, in Test 2, if you pipe DIR into SORT (DIR | SORT) to get a sorted directory, as suggested in the DOS manual, DIR takes 7.25 seconds, which is actually slower than UTIL. And going the DIR | SORT route, all you can do with the output is look at it. Once you have used UTIL, it will probably reside on every disk you own. It does not take up much disk space, and it is very easy to move from disk to disk (after all, it is only one program). And if you have a hard disk, you will never get tired of this program. As was mention previously, you must have DOS 2.0 to be able to use this program. Intelligent programmers cannot afford to not utilize DOS 2.0 features forever. And the program overhead to support all versions of DOS is a waste of energy. PC owners should consider new DOS revisions as being like preventative maintenance on their cars- necessary. 2. Installing UTIL The UTIL program is not copy protected. These installation in- structions are meant to make UTIL work best for you. a) Put DOS 2.0 diskette in drive A: b) Put a blank diskette in drive B: c) Enter the following: FORMAT B:/S Now, remove the DOS diskette from drive A:, and replace with your UTIL diskette. Enter the follow- ing: Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 4 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ COPY A:UTIL.EXE B: This installs the UTIL program on a fresh dis- kette. d) Remove the UTIL diskette from drive A: and replace with the DOS 2.0 diskette again. Enter the follow- ing commands: COPY *.* B: COPY CON: B:CONFIG.SYS DEVICE=ANSI.SYS ^Z Every line typed in is followed by hitting the ENTER key. The last line (^Z) is gotten either by hitting F6 or CTRL-Z. e) Copy any other DOS utilities or programs you may require regularly onto drive B. What you did in the above steps was to create a boot dis- kette for your system. The important things done were: * Put the file ANSI.SYS on the boot diskette. This file was provided on your original DOS 2.0 distribution diskette. * Build a file called CONFIG.SYS on your boot diskette, with one line in the file, saying DEVICE=ANSI.SYS. When DOS 2.0 boots, it looks for a file by this name. If it finds it, it loads any specified device drivers (ANSI.SYS, in this case). This provides for extended screen and keyboard handling, which UTIL uses. Note: You needn't worry about the CONFIG.SYS or ANSI.SYS files after you have booted your machine. They are only required at machine boot. 2.1 RAM Disk If you have enough memory to support a RAM disk, it would be a good idea to copy UTIL.EXE to the RAM disk when you boot up. The copy operation should be done from within your AUTOEXEC.BAT file after creation of the RAM disk. If you wish to utilize UTIL's crude database capability (for often used phone numbers, addresses, etc.), you will also want to copy this file into your RAM disk (the file is called DATABASE; see discussion of the database option for more details). Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 5 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ 2.2 The PC XT Put the UTIL distribution diskette in drive A:, and type in the following C>A: A>COPY UTIL.EXE C:\ or C>COPY A:UTIL.EXE \ The idea is to load UTIL into the root directory on your hard disk. 2.3 For both machines On all the diskettes you will boot the machine up from, you need to * Have an AUTOEXEC.BAT file * Have a file called CONFIG.SYS with a line in it which says DEVICE=ANSI.SYS. * Have the ANSI.SYS file (supplied on your DOS 2.0 diskette) 2.4 Changing .EXE Name Many users find it convenient to rename UTIL to DO. This makes for less to type in, and seems to read naturally when typed from the command line. For example, A>DO SD C:\ASM\SOURCE reads "do sorted directory on C:\ASM\SOURCE" Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 6 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ 3. Summary of Utilities Name Function sd Sorted directory br Screen listing of a text file. Uses PgUp and PgDn keys kb Allows keyboard redefinition db A crude data base routine tf Causes printer to do a top-of-form mo Switch to monochrome display co Switch to color display All commands may be entered in either upper or lower case. Most of the commands listed above have additional options which can be invoked. These are described under the detailed description of each of the commands, which follow shortly. UTIL was designed as a utility. It is meant to be easy to use and fast. It is not sickeningly friendly. It does not say please once. Errors are caught, but if the program cannot figure out something to do, it will usually do something harmless (wrong, but harmless). Many users are finding out that an overabundance of menus and mushy friendliness really get in your way after you have learned how to run the program. Not only that, but after you are familiar with the program, they almost insult your intel- ligence. If you cannot remember what UTIL options are available, or the order of entry of items on the command line, or if you want to use several of UTIL's features in the same run, merely type UTIL <ENTER> from the command line. UTIL will then prompt you for what options are available, and what to do each step of the way. Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 7 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ 4. Sorted Directory (sd) 4.1 Introduction to Sorted Directories SD will probably be the most useful of all the utilities con- tained in the UTIL program. You will find no end to the usefull- ness of SD. After you have seen what it can do, you will probably wonder how you ever got along without it. SD will serve you most effectively when installed in a RAM pseudo-disk. Installed this way, it will always be available, and can be invoked almost instantly. The reason the SD option was written into UTIL was that I often felt that the directory listing programs normally available to the user left a lot to be desired. When you consider what your time is worth, the time you spend screwing around looking at the contents of your disk costs a bundle (in time, headaches, and mistakes). SD is useful for full screen directory and file manipulation. By default, it displays the current directory in alphabetical order. Only 30 entries may be viewed on the screen at a time. But since they are viewed full screen, hitting the RIGHT arrow key a couple of times will bring in another 15 entries. This continues until you don't have any more directory entries. The LEFT arrow key does the same thing in the reverse direction. Try it. Even if you do not use the subdirectory feature of DOS 2.0, you will still enjoy the ease with which you can look at what is contained on your diskettes. At the touch of a key, you can resort the directory 3 different ways. You can also browse whatever file the cursor is pointing to. Or print the file the cursor is pointing to. Or (in the browse option), print any part of a file. Or execute your favorite word processor or text editor on it. Or run a program on it. The SD option of UTIL is invoked by typing the following at the DOS command prompt: UTIL SD [drive][path] The [drive] and [path] are optional. If you are on drive B and wish to view the directory of drive A, merely type UTIL SD A: The user has a Home directory. This is the directory he was in when he entered UTIL (by default). The Home directory will be listed at the top of the screen. In addition to this there will be the Displayed directory. By default, this will also be the Home directory. The Displayed directory will also be shown at the top of the screen. The Home directory will also be the directory to which any files Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 8 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ are copied when the COPY command is invoked. While a directory is displayed, the user can instantly resort the displayed directory by alpha, extension, or date, all at the touch of a key ( A for alpha, X for extension, or D for date). The user can delete a file or files in whatever directory he is currently viewing on the screen by moving the "cursor" next to an entry and hitting alt-d. This will cause a DEL to appear next to that entry. In the directory list, all subdirectories of the Displayed direc- tory are preceded by a "\". If the user positions the cursor over a subdirectory name and hits <ENTER>, the Displayed directory becomes the appropriate subdirectory. Note: Deletes are done from within the program. COPIES are done when you exit UTIL. I let DOS do the copying, since it is much more efficient, especially on systems that don't have a bunch of memory. Letting DOS do the copying is no real handicap. You should know that this is what is done so that after leaving UTIL, you don't get confused as to where these COPY commands are appearing from. In addition, you should not change diskettes until you exit UTIL, since it expects the files you flagged for copying to be on certain drives. If you have done no copying, changing diskettes is no problem. 4.2 Resorting the Directory (A,X or D) 4.2.1 Alphabetic Sort (A). Hit A to sort the directroy al- phabetically. Note that this is the default sort. 4.2.2 Extension Sort (X). Hit X to resort the viewed directory by extension. 4.2.3 Date Sort (D). Hit D to resort the viewed directory by date. 4.3 Going Through Subdirectories (.,L,V,I,!) 4.3.1 Up a Level (.). Hitting . (period) causes the program to revert one level in the subdirectory heiarchy. The command will be ignored if you are already in the root directory. Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 9 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ 4.3.2 Last Directory (L). Hit L to see the last subdirectory (or drive, or whatever) that you were viewing previously. Let's say you were viewing subdirectory C:\LANG\C and you went off and viewed the contents of drive A:. Rather than having to respecify C:\LANG\C if you want to review it, merely hit L. Note: UTIL only maintains one previous directory information. Because of this, hitting L twice is a waste of time. 4.3.3 A Different Drive (V). Hit V to see the directory of a different disk drive than the one you are currently viewing. At the bottom of the screen, you are prompted to enter the drive letter. Respond appropriately. No <ENTER> is required. 4.3.4 Immediately View Another Directory (I). Hit I to im- mediately view the directory of another drive, or merely another subdirectory on the current drive. As an example, let's say you are currently viewing a directory on drive B, and you wish to see the directory of drive A. Hit I to get into this option. When the prompt appears at the bottom of the screen, respond with A: <ENTER> You will now be viewing the directory of drive A. Note that in this simple case, you could have gotten the same effect with the V option. Thus, a more complicated example is in order. Suppose you are viewing a directory on drive B and wish to look at directory A:\DBASE. First, hit I to get into this option. When the prompt appears at the bottom of the screen, respond with A:\DBASE As you did in puberty, experiment with this one. 4.3.5 Move into a Displayed Subdirectory (<ENTER>). As was mentioned previously, any items in the directory list whose names begin with a "\" are subdirectories. Merely position the cursor over one of these and hit <ENTER>. The subdirectory you were pointing do will be entered, and its direc- tory read. This command only has an effect if your cursor is positoned over an entry in the directory list whose name begins with a "\". Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 10 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ 4.3.6 Reread Directory (!). To reread a directory, hit !. Why would you ever want to reread a directory? This option is most useful when you have several diskettes upon which you wish to find some files you need. You put the first diskette in drive B, and do an SD on it. This disk does not have what you wanted. Load the second disk in drive B, and hit !. The directory of drive B will be reread, which is exactly what you wanted. 4.4 Screen Copy (S) If you are lucky enough to have both the monochrome and a graphics screen, this command may prove useful. Hitting S will copy the contents of the screen you are on to the screen you aren't on. When you are comparing the contents of disks or sub- directories, this can be very useful. Note that you do not switch screens by hitting S. You merely copy the contents of the screen you are working on to the other screen. 4.5 Printing a File (P) While the cursor is over the name of a file, hitting P will cause that file to be printed to the line printer. This option works well in conjunction with the B (BROWSE) option, wherein after rummaging through several files on a diskette with BROWSE, you finally find the one you want to print out. Hit <ESC> to leave BROWSE, then hit P. The file you were just browsing will be printed. The PRINT option will properly expand tabs contained in the text. If you have one of the many available print spoolers (many are free), this command will work it's fastest. Otherwise, you must wait for the file to finish printing before you can resume. 4.6 Browsing a File (B or alt-B) While the cursor is over the name of a file, the user can hit B to browse the file. It is assummed that the file being browsed is a text file capable of being viewed. Don't bother trying to view .COM files, for instance. Hitting <ESC> takes you back to the directory you were viewing before you did the browse. As a special feature for WORDSTAR fans, hitting alt-B will browse your WORDSTAR files, making them suitable for screen display. The display will not be perfect, but you will be able to read the Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 11 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ file well enough to know what it contains. The browse command is unique in that text is read and put to the screen directly from disk. The reading is done one screen at a time. Thus, browse will get your text to the screen much faster than most editors can. And browse does not care how long your file is. A 100Kb file will appear on the screen just as fast as a 2Kb file. While in BROWSE, you will see instructions at the bottom of the screen. They tell you that you can hit the PgUp key to go a page backwards in the text, PgDn to go down a page, or <ESC> to leave browse. While in the SD option of UTIL, <ESC> will get you back to the directory which was being diplayed when you hit B to invoke BROWSE. What these instructions don't tell you is what else you can do. After a page appears on the screen, notice the small right point- ing arrow in the first column of the last line of displayed text. This is the cursor. Use your UP and DOWN arrows to make the cursor move. Notice how the cursor stops at the first and last displayed line on the screen. Moving the cursor does nothing in itself (except move the cursor). If you hit M, you mark that line of text. Move to another line and hit M again. Now, you have marked two lines. If you now hit P, all lines between (and including) the marked lines will be printed to the printer. If you have made one mark, then hit *, this tells BROWSE to consider the last line of the file as the second mark. Thus, hitting P will print from the first mark to the end of the file. If no marks are made, and you hit *, this tells BROWSE to mark the text from the top of the current screen to the end of the file. Following the * with a P will cause those lines to be printed. Note that your printing will go much faster if you have a print spooler. If you do not, you will (unfortunately) have to wait until the printing has completed. Just as a reminder, every time a text line is marked using M, an * appears to the right of the message at the bottom of the screen. If you have marked text and decide you would like to mark a different block of text, hit U. This will undo all existing marks. When you see two *'s, this means you have marked two points in the file for possible printing. Hitting P will cause the marked area to be printed. If you were interrupted after marking the text (or just forgot what you marked), you can always hit U, then remark the text. If you try to mark more than two points, you'll just here a lonely beep. Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 12 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ 4.7 Invoking Your Editor (E) Often, after browsing a file, you decide that you would like to edit that file. With the cursor over the file you wish to edit, hit E. The program will call up your favorite text editor, and cause it to begin editing that file. By default, the editor invoked is the Personal Editor (sold by IBM). You can easily change this, though. In the back of the DOS 2.0 manual there is a section on Advanced Commands. One of these is the SET command. This allows you to put data into the environment. The environment is an area of memory set aside when you start DOS, and it's contents are available to all application programs. This is where you need to tell UTIL the name of your favorite editor. From the keyboard (at the DOS prompt), merely type SET UT*ED=editor where editor is the name of your favorite editor. For example, if you use EDLIN as your editor, type in the following (at the DOS prompt): SET UT*ED=EDLIN It is a good idea to put this SET command in your AUTOEXEC file. This way, you will never forget to do it. 4.8 Invoking Your Wordprocessor (W) This is similar to the EDIT option described above except this command invokes your favorite word processor. As was discussed in the EDIT command above, you must place the name of your word processor in the environment. Do this as follows: SET UT*WP=wordprocessor where wordprocessor is the name of your favorite word processor. For example, if you use WORDSTAR, you would type in the following (at the DOS prompt): SET UT*WP=WS As was mentioned in EDIT, it is a good idea to place this line in your AUTOEXEC file so you won't forget to do it. Note: If either your word processor or text editor requires some command line options, these can be specified via the SET command. Merely put a $ where the file name is to be substituted. UTIL will take care of the rest. For instance, if you usually invoke your editor by specifying the "a" and "p" options, you would specify this to UTIL by saying the Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 13 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ following: SET UT*ED=myeditor $/a/p When you invoke your editor on a file by hitting the E option, UTIL will replace the $ with the name of the file which your cursor is on. 4.9 Global Operations (*) While viewing a directory on the screen, hitting * invokes a prompt at the bottom of the screen. The program will ask you if you want to delete (alt-D), copy (alt-C), or do nothing (ESC). Hit the <ESC> key if you hit the * key by mistake. Otherwise, the current sort mode determines what following alt-D or alt-C means. If you are in the alphanumeric or extension sort and respond with alt-D, all files with the same extension as the file your cursor is pointing to are marked for deletion. If you are in the date sort, hitting alt-C means copy all files from (and including) the one pointed to by the cursor to the last file in the date sorted list. Hitting the <ENTER> key with the cursor over a name which begins with a \ places you in that subdirectory, viewing it's contents. 4.10 Delete a File (alt-D) With the cursor positioned over a file name, hitting alt-D marks the file for deletion. I say mark because the file will not be immediately deleted. You can cause the marked files to be deleted by hitting alt-X (execute). This gives you a chance to change your mind (see the alt-U option). Files flagged for deletion are not remembered when you move from directory to directory. Thus, if you try to change directories, the program will remind you that there are files flagged for deletion, and will ask it you wish to perform the deletions. A simple Y or N is all that is required. No <ENTER> is necessary. 4.11 Copy a File (alt-C) With the cursor positioned over a file name, hitting alt-C will mark the file for copying. That is copying the file from the directory being viewed to the Home directory. Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 14 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ 4.12 Special Command, User Defined (alt-S) While your cursor is positioned over a file name on the directory listing, hitting alt-S invokes your 'special' command on the file. As was done with the E and W options (see above), the command which is 'special' is contained in the environment. It goes under the name UT*SP. You must set it into the environment either at boot time, or before executing UTIL. Once specified, it needn't be reentered. The environment will remember what you have specified until you turn your machine off or reboot. Let's say you were into assembly language programming, and you see several files in the directory listing that need to be reassmebled. The assembler program is called MASM. You would do the following (either at the DOS prompt, or in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file): SET UT*SP=MASM While the cursor is over a file name, hitting alt-S will cause the following command to be generated: MASM filename where filename is the file your cursor was pointing to. Note that, like the alt-C command, this command will not be executed until you exit UTIL. The command is merely generated internally, and held until you exit the program (it is actually put into a BATCH file which will be executed when the program UTIL terminates). Because of an apparent oversight, a .BAT file cannot execute another .BAT file (this is true in DOS 2.0, at least). If some- where in the middle of .BAT file 1 you invoke .BAT file 2, DOS will never return you to .BAT file 1 to finish it. Thus, if you set UT*SP to be a .BAT file, you may not be too happy with the results. For this reason, UT*SP can specify more than one program to run. Let's take, for example, the compiling of a program under the C86 compiler. The compiler is composed of 3 programs, named CC1, CC2 and CC3. I am looking at a directory and see 3 files I want to compile. I move the cursor over each file name and hit ALT-S. I then exit UTIL by hitting <ESC>. In my environment, I have previously put the following: SET UT*SP=.CC1 $ ^ .CC2 $ ^ .CC3 $ ^ The $ signs tell UTIL where the file name is to be placed. The ^ tells UTIL to do a carriage return. The "." in front of each string instructs is optional, and tells UTIL to rip the extension (if there is one) off of the file name. Not putting the "." would have left the extension on the file name, and it would be sub- stituted in it's entirety for the $ at all three occurances. Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 15 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ Note that if you mark a file by hitting ALT-S, but have failed to specify UT*SP, UTIL will not give you an error, but will instead cause the following command to be executed: ECHO filename This will just print the file name on the screen, and won't hurt anything. Remember: Any strings which needs to go in the environ- ment should be specified via SET commands in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file!! 4.13 Undo (alt-U) Deletes and copies are not done instantly. This is protection against yourself. As you are viewing a directory, entries which you have flagged for deletion, copying, or a special operation are flagged by a DEL or CPY or SP* to the left of the name which has been flagged. If you have the cursor over a file name which is thus marked and hit alt-U, the flag will be removed. The alt-U option is especially useful when used in conjunction with the global (*) option. Let's say you have used * to mark 15 .BAK files for deltetion. But there are two of these files you would like to keep. Merely position the cursor over the two files you wish to keep and hit alt-U. The DEL will disappear, assuring you that the file will not be deleted. 4.14 Executing Deletions (alt-X) When you are satisfied that files in the current directory have been properly marked for either copying or deleting, hit alt-X. All files marked for deletion will actually be deleted. If you have marked any files for copying, UTIL will exit, and execute a .BAT file it has been building with COPY commands in it. The COPY operation could be done from within the UTIL program, but it would be much, much slower than DOS. This is due to the fact that UTIL is hogging somewhere around 96K of memory when it begins executing. Thus, remaining memory is scarce on many systems. Once UTIL is exited, however, 96K is freed back up, and DOS has this entire area to use as a buffer for disk copying. 5. Browsing a File (br) This facility lets you list any text file on the screen. When the screen fills, you can use the PgUp or PgDn keys to browse through the file. Browse is novel in that the scrolling is done directly from disk. No text is stored in memory, so system memory require- ments are kept low. Hit <ESC> to exit browse. Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 16 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ Even though UTIL is probably close in size to your editor or word processor, files can be viewed much faster using BROWSE than your editor or word processor. This is due to the fact that the BROWSE option does not attempt to load your entire file before it begins showing it to you on the screen. Instead, it lists lines of text to the screen as they are read from disk. You are allowed full screen paging through the file as it is being viewed. Note that this same option is available in the SD option of UTIL (see below). Also see the decription of browse contained within the SD documentation for some additional features which are available under this browse too (especially the printing of a part of the file you are browsing). The BROWSE option of UTIL is exactly the same as the browse you get under SD. All features available under that option are avail- able here. 6. Keyboard Redefinition (kb) Allows redefining the keys on the keyboard. DOS 2.0 provides for keyboard redefinition, but only in a limited sense. The DOS manual confuses many about how the keys on the keyboard can actually be redefined. In order for key redefinition to occur, you must have a file called CONFIG.SYS on your diskette when you boot up. For key redefinition to occur, you need only one line in the CONFIG.SYS file. This line is: DEVICE = ANSI.SYS ANSI.SYS is a file which was supplied to you when you bought DOS 2.0. In addition to the CONFIG.SYS file, you also need the ANSI.SYS I mentioned earlier that key redefinition was limited under DOS 2.0. This is because some crazy person thought that you didn't need more than 190 bytes (for some strange reason) to redefine all of the keys you wanted to. This isn't much, believe me. There is a good, easy fix given by Ronald Parsons in the September '83 issue of PC Magazine on pp586-587. Do it, unless IBM comes out with a new release of DOS which corrects this stupid limitation. You will be propmted to hit the key to be redefined. Hit the key. Next, you will be asked to type in what you want the key to be defined to. If you want to reset they key back to what it was, hit <ESC> <ENTER> (the ESC key and then the ENTER key). If you want to define the key to a string, type in the string. An example follows. Suppose you are constantly running a program which asks a lot of stupid, redundant questions . Just to get into your program, you Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 17 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ need to answer "Y" to 14 dumb questions. Use UTIL to redefine a key. Say you want to turn F1 into 14 "Y" answers. When UTIL prompts you to redefine the key you just hit, the in the follow- ing : YYYYYYYYYYYYYY <ENTER> Now, when running your program, hitting F1 answers 14 stupid questions for you. Now, let's say you have another frequently used program which requires 3 responses upon initialization, the answers to which rarely change. You might want to assign the answers to F2. In response to the UTIL prompt, type the follow- ing: Y^BIGBOOBS^EASYTOLAY^ The ^ tells DOS to do an <ENTER>, by the way. At least it tells UTIL to tell DOS to do an <ENTER>. Anyway, the ^ means <ENTER>. When your program got to the point where it was asking you these 3 magic questions, you need only hit F2. 7. A Crude Database (db) 7.1 Description The db option of UTIL provides for a very crude data base capability. The db option functions in a retrieval mode only, and does not allow the adding or deleting of items from the data base. 7.2 Useage The data base is created by you in the root directory. You must name the file DATABASE, and the file must be in ASCII format. Your data base entries each occupy one line in the file DATABASE. Suppose you want to have a database with phone numbers in it for handy access. Begin by putting the following in a file called DATABASE. Ralph Itup ^ 111-2222 I.M. Horny ^ 123-6969 I. Gaveattheoffice ^ 444-0000 Ben Dover ^ 553-9988 The ^'s you see tell UTIL to perform a carriage return. Thus, when the first entry was printed to the screen by UTIL, you would see Ralph Itup 111-2222 Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 18 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ Thus, the imbedded ^ signs are used purely for neatness on output display, and are put there at your discretion. To search for an item in the data base, you must supply a group of characters to search for. This can be done from the command line (when you invoke UTIL), or UTIL will prompt you for it. To find the phone number of Ralph Itup, you could do any of the following: do db Ralph do db ralph do db alp do db up etc. Whatever you provide to search for, UTIL will present you with anything it finds that matches. Note that the search is case insensitive, i.e. you needn't remember whether you entered an upper or lower case letter in the data base. As was alluded to earlier, UTIL presently only retrieves informa- tion from the data base you created by hand. You must use your text editor to modify, add or delete items from the data base itself. Nevertheless, the db option of UTIL is great for the information you need quick access to all of the time (such as phone numbers and addresses). 8. Switching Between Screens (mo and co) Allows you to easily switch from one display to the other. If you are using the monochrome monitor and wish to use the color monitor, type in A>UTIL CO This will make your active display the color screen. Type in A>UTIL MO to switch back to the monochrome monitor. As with all other commands in UTIL, this command may be entered directly from the DOS prompt, or from the menu (gotten by inkok- ing UTIL with no options). Even though the DOS MODE command supports switching screens, it was felt that this was still a useful option, since if you have UTIL, you needn't haul MODE around too. Plus, UTIL does not terminate and remain resident, as does MODE. Revision 11-22-83 Documentation - 19 - UTIL Version 1.3 _________________________________________________________________ 9. Type Directly to Printer (ty) This option provides a very raw interface between your computer and your printer. It was meant to closely simulate using a regular typewriter. It is a useful option in situations where you want to bang a note or memo out quickly, and would rather not call up a text editor or wordprocessor. No buffering is done in the computer. As a character is typed, it is sent to the printer. Note that many dot matrix printers con- tain their own storage, and will buffer characters typed until you hit <ENTER>. When you have typed all you need to type to the printer, hit F3 to exit. pe to the printer, hit F3 to exit.