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ARC File Archive Utility Version 6.00 COPYRIGHT 1985,86,87,88,89 by System Enhancement Associates, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This document describes version 6.00 of the ARC file utility, which was created by System Enhancement Associates, Inc. in January of 1989. LIMITED WARRANTY IMPORTANT NOTICE: IMPORTANT NOTICE: Any use of this software for any period of time for any purpose whatsoever constitutes your unqualified acceptance of this LICENSE and subjects you to all of the terms and conditions set forth below: System Enhancement Associates, Inc. ("SEA") warrants to any Licensee that acquires the program from SEA or an authorized SEA representative ONLY that: 1) All diskettes SEA provides constitute an accurate duplication of the software and SEA will replace any diskette found to be defective within 30 days from date of acquisition. SEA will not honor this warranty if the diskette has been subjected to physical abuse, or used in defective or non- compatible equipment. 2) SEA's software will perform substantially as described in the documentation SEA regularly supplies with that software, if operated as prescribed in such documentation including the hardware and software environment specified. 3) If a significant defect in any program is found, Licensee's only remedy shall be to receive refund of the actual fee Licensee paid for such defective program. In no event will such a refund exceed the fee SEA charges for such program. 4) SEA makes no warranty or representation that the software will be error free nor that its use by Licensee will be uninterrupted. Except as provided above, SEA disclaims all other warranties, either express or implied, including but not limited to any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. Licensee agrees to take full responsibility for the selection of and any use whatsoever made of the software. IN NO EVENT WILL SEA BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION OR THE LIKE) ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF, INTERRUPTION IN THE USE OF, OR INABILITY TO USE THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF SEA HAS BEEN ADVISED OF ANY POSSIBILITY OR LIKELYHOOD OF SUCH DAMAGES. TABLE OF CONTENTS _______ ____ Section Page Introduction .................................... 1 Using ARC ....................................... 3 ARC commands .................................... 5 Adding files ................................ 5 Extracting files ............................ 8 Deleting files .............................. 9 Listing archive entries ..................... 9 Running files ............................... 12 Printing files .............................. 13 Testing an archive .......................... 13 Converting an archive ....................... 14 ARC options ..................................... 15 Directories ................................. 15 Level 5 compatibility ....................... 15 Verbose mode ................................ 16 Backup retention ............................ 16 Suppressing compression ..................... 17 Message suppression ......................... 18 Encryption/Decryption ....................... 19 Indirection ..................................... 21 RAMdisk support ................................. 22 Version numbers ................................. 23 Common questions and answers .................... 24 Maintenance contracts ........................... 26 Revision history ................................ 27 Changes in version 5 ........................ 27 Changes in version 5.3 ...................... 29 Changes in version 6.0 ...................... 29 Program history and credits ..................... 31 Bulletin boards ................................. 33 Site licenses ................................... 34 The SEA Utilities ............................... 35 BLANK PAGE ARC Page 0 INTRODUCTION ARC is the copyrighted property of System Enhancement Associates, Inc. You are granted a limited license to use ARC, and to copy it and distribute it, provided that the following conditions are met: 1) No fee may be charged for such copying and distribution. ____ 2) ARC may only be distributed in its original, unmodified state. ___ 3) ARC may not be distributed, in whole or in part, as part of any commercial product or service without the express written permission of System Enhancement Associates. Contributions for the use of this program will be appreciated, and should be sent to: System Enhancement Associates, Inc. 21 New Street, Wayne NJ 07470 You may not use this product in a commercial environment or a governmental organization without paying a license fee of $35. Site licenses and commercial distribution licenses are available. A program disk and printed documentation are available for $50. See the order form enclosed with this manual for more details. ARC is user supported software. This means that you may copy it freely and give the copies away to anyone you wish, at no cost. They are in turn requested to send in a contribution if they decide to use it. The user supported software concept (often referred to _________ as shareware) is an attempt to provide software at low cost. The cost of offering a new product by conventional means is staggering, and hence dissuades many independent authors and small companies from developing and promoting their ideas. User supported software is an attempt to develop a new marketing channel where products can be introduced at low cost. ARC Page 1 If user supported software works, then everyone will benefit. The user will benefit by receiving quality products at low cost, and by being able to "test drive" software thoroughly before purchasing it. The author benefits by being able to enter the commercial software arena without first needing large sources of venture capital. But it can only work with your support. We're not ___ just talking about ARC here, but about all user supported software. If you obtain a user supported program from a friend or colleague, and are still using it after a couple of weeks, then it is obviously worth something to you, and a contribution should be sent. And now, back to ARC: ARC is used to create and maintain file archives. An archive is a group of files collected together into one file in such a way that the individual files may be recovered intact. ARC automatically compresses the files being archived so that the resulting archive takes up a minimum amount of space. When ARC is used to add a file to an archive it analyzes the file to determine which of three storage methods will result in the greatest savings. These three methods are: 1) No compression; the file is stored as is. 2) Repeated-character compression; repeated sequences of the same byte value are collapsed into a three- byte code sequence. 3) Dynamic Lempel-Ziv compression; the file is stored as a series of variable size bit codes which represent character strings, and which are created "on the fly". Note that since one of the three methods involves no compression at all, the resulting archive entry will never be larger than the original file. ARC Page 2 USING ARC ARC is invoked with a command of the following format: ARC <x> <arcname> [<template> . . .] Where: <x> is an ARC command letter (see below), in either upper or lower case. <arcname> is the name of the archive to act on, with or without an extension. If no extension is supplied, then ".ARC" is assumed. The archive name may include path and drive specifiers. <template> is one or more file name templates. The "wildcard" characters "*" and "?" may be used. A file name template may include a path or drive specifier, though it isn't always meaningful. If ARC is invoked with no arguments (by typing "ARC", and pressing "enter"), then a brief command summary is displayed. Following is a brief summary of the available ARC commands: a = add files to archive m = move files to archive u = update files in archive f = freshen files in archive d = delete files from archive x,e = extract files from archive r = run files from archive p = copy files from archive to standard output l = list files in archive v = verbose listing of files in archive t = test archive integrity c = convert entry to new storage method ARC Page 3 Following is a brief summary of the available ARC options, which may alter how a command works: m = move files to archive z = include subdirectories in archive v = verbose mode b = retain backup copy of archive s = suppress compression (store only) w = suppress warning messages n = suppress notes and comments o = overwrite existing files when extracting 5 = produce only level 5 compatable archives g = encode or decode archive entry ARC Page 4 ARC COMMANDS This section describes each of the commands. ARC will accept any one command at a time. If no commands are given, then a brief command list is displayed. ____________ ADDING FILES Files are added to an archive using the "A" (Add), "U" (Update), or "F" (Freshen) commands. Add always adds the file. Update differs from Add in that the file is only added if it is not already in the archive, or if it is newer that the corresponding entry in the archive. Freshen is similar to Update, except that new files are not added to the archive; only files already in the archive are updated. For example, if you wish to add a file named "TEST.DAT" to an archive named "MY.ARC", you would use a command of the form: ARC a my test.dat If you wanted to add all files with a ".C" extension, and all files named "STUFF" to an archive named "JUNK.ARC", you could type: ARC a junk *.c stuff.* If you have an archive named "TEXT.ARC", and you wanted to add to it all of your files with an extension of ".TXT" which have been created or changed since they were last archived, then you would type: ARC u text *.txt ARC Page 5 If you have a bunch of files in your current directory, with backup copies being stored in an archive named "SAFE.ARC", then if you wanted to make sure that every file in the archive is the latest version of that file, you would type: ARC f safe A word about Update and Freshen: These are similar in that they look at the date and time of last change on the file, and only add it if the file has been changed since it was last archived. They differ in that Update will add new files, while Freshen will not. In other words, Update looks for the files on disk, and adds them if they are new or have changed, while Freshen looks in the archive, and tries to update the files which are already there. The Add, Update, and Freshen commands may be modified by the "M" (Move) option. The Move option tells ARC to delete the file on disk once it is safely tucked away in the archive. For example, if you wanted to move all files in your current directory into an archive named "SUM.ARC", you could use a command of the form: ARC am sum *.* When Move is combined with Update or Freshen, it deletes the files that are in the archive, even if it does not need to compress them again. For example, suppose you extracted several files from an archive named "STUFF.ARC" and then made changes to a few of them. Now you want to pack away the new versions of what you changed, and clean up the mess (that is, delete all the files you extracted). You can do it easily by using the command: ARC fm stuff If the Move option is given by itself, it acts like an "Add and Move". So in our earlier example of moving everything in your current directory into an archive named "SUM.ARC", you could also use the command: ARC m sum *.* ARC Page 6 If you don't say which files to add, ARC adds everything in your current directory. So we could shorten that to: ARC m sum Archive entries are always maintained in alphabetic order. Archive entries may not have duplicate names. If you add a file to an archive that already contains a file by that name, then the existing entry in the archive is replaced. Also, the archive itself and its backup will not be added. You may also add a file which is in a directory other than your current directory. For example, it is perfectly legal to type: ARC a junk c:\dustbin\stuff.txt You cannot add two files with the same name. In other words, if you have a file named "C:\DUSTBIN\STUFF.TXT" and another file named "C:\BUCKET\STUFF.TXT", then typing: arc a junk c:\dustbin\*.* c:\bucket\*.* will not work. ARC does not save the path name in this case. In other words, if you specify a drive and/or path when adding a file, only the actual file name is stored in the archive. ___ However, you can store a subdirectory in an archive, but you have to tell ARC that you want to do that. When you add the "Z" option to an Add, Update, or Freshen, ARC will store subdirectories and their contents in such a way that it can later recreate them. For example, suppose you have a directory name C:\WASTE that you wish to place in an archive named "TRASHCAN.ARC". You could do this with the command: ARC az trashcan c:\waste This would cause ARC to place the C:\WASTE directory (and all of its contents, including any subdirec- tories) into the TRASHCAN.ARC archive. The directory ARC Page 7 is stored in such a way that it can be extracted anywhere. It could, for example, be extracted as D:\JUNKYARD\WASTE if you so desired. If you combine the "Z" and "M" options, then the directories are removed from your disk once they are safely stored in the archive. ARC will not add an archive to itself, nor will it add the temporary copy or a backup copy of the archive. An interesting note: It has been brought to our attention that BASIC programs compress to a smaller ___ size when they are not tokenized. If you are more concerned with space than speed, you may wish to convert your BASIC programs to ASCII form before adding them to an archive. Your BASIC manual should give instructions on how to do this. ________________ EXTRACTING FILES Archive entries are extracted with the "E" (Extract) or "X" (eXtract) commands. For example, if you had an archive named "JUNK.ARC", and you wanted all files in it with an extension of ".TXT" or ".DOC" to be recreated on your disk, you could type: ARC x junk *.txt *.doc If you wanted to extract all of the files in an archive named "JUNK.ARC", you could simply type: ARC x junk Whatever method of file compression was used in storing the files is reversed, and uncompressed copies are created in the current directory. You can also specify a path name, in which case the decompressed copy is placed in the specified directory. For example, if you had an archive named "JUNK.ARC", and you wanted all files in it with an extension of ".TXT" to be placed in the directory "C:\WASTE\LAND", then you could type: ARC x junk c:\waste\land\*.txt ARC Page 8 If you wanted to put the file "TRASH.TXT" on your A: drive, and the file "LITTER.TXT" on your B: drive, you could type: ARC x junk a:trash.txt b:litter.txt If you give more than one path for a file, then only the first one is used. For example, if you typed: ARC x junk a:trash.txt b:trash.txt then TRASH.TXT will be placed on your A: drive. ______________ DELETING FILES Archive entries are deleted with the "D" (Delete) command. For example, if you had an archive named "JUNK.ARC", and you wished to delete all entries in it with a filename extension of ".C", you could type: ARC d junk *.c _______________________ LISTING ARCHIVE ENTRIES You can obtain a list of the contents of an archive by using the "L" (List) command or the "V" (Verbose list) command. For example, to see what is in an archive named "JUNK.ARC", you could type: ARC l junk If you are only interested in files with an extension of ".DOC", then you could type: ARC l junk *.doc ARC prints a short listing of an archive's contents like this: Name Length Date ============ ======== ========= ALPHA.TXT 6784 16 May 85 BRAVO.TXT 2432 16 May 85 COCO.TXT 256 16 May 85 ==== ======== Total 3 9472 ARC Page 9 "Name" is simply the name of the file. "Length" is the unpacked file length. In other words, it is the number of bytes of disk space which the file would take up if it were extracted. "Date" is the date on which the file had last been modified, as of the time when it was added to the archive. "Total" is pretty obvious, I think. ARC prints a verbose listing of an archive's contents like this: Name Length Stowage SF Size now Date Time CRC ============ ======== ======== ==== ======== ========= ====== ==== ALPHA.TXT 6784 Crunched 35% 4413 16 May 85 11:53a 8708 BRAVO.TXT 2432 Crunched 41% 1438 16 May 85 11:53a 5BD6 COCO.TXT 256 Packed 5% 244 16 May 85 11:53a 3AFB ==== ======== ==== ======== Total 3 9472 27% 6095 "Name", "Length", and "Date" are the same as for a short listing. "Stowage" is the compression method used. The following compression methods are currently known: -- No compression. Packed Runs of repeated byte values are collapsed. Crunched Lempel-Ziv compression technique employed. Squeezed Huffman encoding compression technique, as employed by an earlier version of ARC. Deviant A nonstandard variant of Lempel-Ziv was employed. Files compressed with this method should be converted (with the "C" command). Subdir A subdirectory. The files within the subdirectory may be viewed by using the "Z" option. ARC Page 10 "SF" is the stowage factor. In other words, it is the percentage of the file length which was saved by compression. The total stowage factor is the stowage factor for the archive as a whole, not counting archive overhead. "Size now" is the number of bytes the file is occupying while in the archive. "Time" is the time of last modification, and is associated with the date of last modification. "CRC" is the CRC check value which has been stored with the file. Another CRC value will be calculated when the file is extracted or tested to ensure data integrity. There is no especially good reason for displaying this value. ARC follows a verbose listing with a report giving the overall compression for everything in the archive and for anything specific you selected, along with a prediction of whether or not the files would fit on your disk if you tried to extract them. For example, if you wanted to know if all of the files with an extension of ".TXT" in an archive named "WASTE.ARC" would fit on your D: drive, you would give the command: ARC v waste d:*.txt At the end of the listing ARC would give its prediction of whether or not your D: drive has room for those files. ARC Page 11 _____________ RUNNING FILES Archive entries may be run without being extracted by use of the "R" (Run) command. For example, if you had an archive named "JUNK.ARC" which contained a file named "LEMON.COM", which you wished to run, you could type: ARC r junk lemon You can run any file from an archive which has an extension of ".COM", ".EXE", ".BAT", or ".BAS". You do not have to specify the extension, but all matching files are run if you do not. In other words, if you had an archive named "JUNK.ARC" which contained the files "LEMON.COM", "LEMON.EXE", and "LEMON.BAS", and you typed: ARC r junk lemon Then all three programs will be run. You can avoid this by specifying an extension in this case. You can give arguments to the program you are running by appending them to the command line. For example, if you have an archive named "JUNK.ARC" which contains a program named "LEMON.COM", and you wanted to run it giving it the argument "JUICE", you would type: ARC r junk lemon juice You will need a fair amount of memory to run a program from an archive. It probably cannot be done with less than 256k. In practice, the file to be run is extracted, run, and then deleted. In other words, the above example is equivalent to: ARC x junk lemon.com lemon juice erase lemon.com If you have an archive which contains a program that you will be running often, then you should probably extract the program from the archive and use it normally. ARC Page 12 ______________ PRINTING FILES Archive entries may be examined with the "P" (Print) command. This works the same as the Extract command, except that the files are not created on disk. Instead, the contents of the files are written to standard output. For example, if you wanted to see the contents of every ".TXT" file in an archive named "JUNK.ARC", but didn't want them saved on disk, you could type: ARC p junk *.txt If you wanted them to be printed on your printer instead of on your screen, you could type: ARC p junk *.txt >prn __________________ TESTING AN ARCHIVE The integrity of an archive may be tested by use of the "T" (Test) command. This checks to make sure that all of the file headers are properly placed, and that all of the files are in good shape. This can be very useful for critical archives, where data integrity must be assured. When an archive is tested, all of the entries in the archive are unpacked (without saving them anywhere) so that a CRC check value may be calculated and compared with the recorded CRC value. For example, if you just received an archive named "JUNK.ARC" over a phone line, and you want to make sure that you received it properly, you could type: ARC t junk It defeats the purpose of the T command to combine it with N or W. ARC Page 13 _____________________ CONVERTING AN ARCHIVE The "C" (Convert) command is used to convert an archive entry to take advantage of newer compression techniques. This is occasionally desirable when a new version of ARC is released. Please refer to the revision history section for details on when new compression methods were implemented. For example, if you had an archive named "JUNK.ARC", and you wanted to make sure that all files with an extension of ".DOC" were encoded using the very latest methods, you could type: ARC c junk *.doc Or if you wanted to convert every file in the archive, you could type: ARC c junk ARC Page 14 ARC OPTIONS This section describes the options which are available to modify how ARC works. Any of these options can be combined with any of the commands, though the result may not always be something you'd want to do. ___________ DIRECTORIES The "Z" option tells ARC that you wish to act on directories as well as files. When combined with Add, Update, Freshen, or Move it tells ARC to add directories to the archive. When combined with List or Verbose it tells ARC to list directory contents. (The Extract command will always extract directories, and does not need to be told to do so.) A directory is treated as a unit by ARC. This means that when you add a directory to an archive you add the whole thing, including all of its files and subdirectories. Likewise, when you extract a directory from an archive you get all of it. If you wish to make a change to a directory that is in an archive, you should extract it, then make whatever changes you want on disk, and then put the directory back into the archive. _____________________ LEVEL 5 COMPATIBILITY The "5" (level 5 compatibility) option can be combined with any comand that alters an archive. It tells ARC that the resulting archive should be fully compatible with ARC version 5. This is mostly necessary for creating archives that are to be extracted on other operating systems where the version of ARC available for that system does not yet support the ARC version 6 extensions. When given the level 5 compatibility option, ARC will ensure that the resulting archive does not contain any directories, comments, or any extended data fields for non-MS-DOS operating systems. ARC Page 15 ____________ VERBOSE MODE The "V" (Verbose) option can be used with any command, though it isn't always meaningful. When used with the List command it causes ARC to display a "verbose listing" of the archive contents. In fact, this is its most common use, so you can use the Verbose option as a command for this purpose. When used with any command that creates a new archive (generally during an Add or a Move), it tells ARC to add a note to the archive saying which version of ARC created the archive. This note is then automatically updated every time the archive is modified, and is displayed during a verbose listing. Normally when ARC adds files to an archive or deletes files from an archive it doesn't say anything about the files it isn't changing. When you use the verbose option ARC will report them. ________________ BACKUP RETENTION When ARC changes an archive (during an Add, Move, Update, Freshen, Delete, or Convert) it creates a new archive with the same name, but with an extension of ".$$$". For example, if you add a file to an archive named STUFF.ARC, then ARC will create a new archive named STUFF.$$$. ARC will read from your existing archive and write out the new archive with any changes to the ".$$$" copy. Normally when ARC is finished it deletes the original and renames the new archive to the original name (ie. STUFF.ARC goes away, and STUFF.$$$ becomes the new STUFF.ARC). Among other things, this means that if anything goes wrong and ARC is unable to finish, then your original archive will still be intact. In some circumstances you may wish to retain the original version of the archive as a backup copy. You can do this easily by using the Backup option. Add the letter "B" to your command, and ARC will rename your original archive to have an extension of ".BAK" instead of deleting it. ARC Page 16 In other words, if you wanted to add "WASTE.TXT" to an archive named "JUNK.ARC", but wanted to keep a backup copy, then you would type: ARC ab junk waste.txt Your original archive would become "JUNK.BAK", while "JUNK.ARC" would contain the new "WASTE.TXT" file. If you keep a backup of an archive which already has a backup, then the older backup copy is deleted. _______________________ SUPPRESSING COMPRESSION The "S" (Suppress compression) option can be combined with any command that updates archive entries. These include Add, Move, Update, Freshen, and Convert. The effect of the S option is to prevent any compression techniques from being employed. This is intended to allow you to add a few files at a time to an archive quickly, and then later convert the archive to compress everything at once. For example, over the course of a day you might give each of the following commands: ARC as junk *.txt ARC as junk *.mac ARC as junk *.doc At the end of the day, when you have finished adding things to the archive, you could have all of the archive entries compressed at once by typing: ARC c junk You could also decompress the archive by typing: ARC cs junk though I can't imagine why you'd want to. ARC Page 17 ___________________ MESSAGE SUPPRESSION ARC prints three types of messages: warnings, comments, and errors. Warnings are messages about suspected error conditions, such as when a file to be extracted already exists, or when an extracted file fails the CRC error check. Warnings may be suppressed by use of the "W" (Warn) command. You should use this command sparingly. In fact, you should probably not use this command at all. Comments (or notes) are informative messages, such as naming each file as it is added to the archive. Comments and notes may be suppressed by use of the "N" (Note) command. Errors are actual system problems, such as running out of disk space. You cannot suppress errors. For example, suppose you extracted all files with an extension of ".BAS" from an archive named "JUNK.ARC" Then, after making some changes which you decide not to keep, you decide that you want to extract them all again, but you don't want to be asked to confirm every one. In this case, you could type: ARC xw junk *.bas Or, if you are going to add a hundred files with an extension of ".MSG" to an archive named "TRASH.ARC", and you don't want ARC to list them as it adds them, you could type: ARC an trash *.msg Or, if you want to extract the entire contents of an archive named "JUNK.ARC", and you don't want to hear anything, then type: ARC xnw junk A special case is provided when extracting files from an archive. One of the various warnings that can occur is when a file being extracted already exists on disk. Normally, ARC will stop and ask you if you want to overwrite the file. This can be suppressed with the "W" command, but that will also suppress any ARC Page 18 warnings about other things, like failed CRC checks and such. ____ The "O" (Overwrite) option suppresses only the warning that the file already exists. For example, in our earlier case of extracting all the ".BAS" files from "JUNK.ARC", a much safer way to do it is to type: ARC xo junk *.BAS _____________________ ENCRYPTION/DECRYPTION Archive entries may be encrypted and decrypted by using the "G" (Garble) option. The Garble option takes the remainder of the command string as the ____ password to use, so it must be the last option. For example, if you wanted to add a file named "WASTE.TXT" to an archive named "JUNK.ARC", and you wanted to encrypt it using the password "DEBRIS", then you would type: ARC agdebris junk waste.txt Later on, when you want to extract it again, you would type: ARC xgdebris junk waste.txt The password you supply is used to encrypt (or decrypt) the archive entry by performing an exclusive OR between each byte of the packed data and each byte of the password. The password can be any length, and each of its bytes is used in rotation. The password is converted to uppercase before it is used, so it is ___ not case sensitive. Since the encryption is performed on the packed data, it has no effect on stowage factors. This is not a particularly sophisticated means of encryption. Still, since it is performed on the packed data, the result should be quite sufficient for casual use. ARC Page 19 You can, if you wish, use different passwords for different files in an archive, but we advise against it. If you are going to encrypt an archive, we suggest you use the same password for every file, and give the password whenever you do anything at all with the archive. It is possible to list the entries in an encrypted archive using the "L" and "V" commands without giving the password, but nothing else will work properly. We advise that you use this option sparingly, if at all. If you should forget or mistype your password, it is highly unlikely that you will ever recover your data. ARC Page 20 INDIRECTION The list of filenames given to ARC may include indirect references. If a filename begins with an "at sign" ("@"), it is taken to be the name of a file which contains a list of file names. The list of file names may include further indirection. For example, the command: arc a waste junk.txt @trash would cause ARC to add JUNK.TXT plus all files listed in the file TRASH to an archive named WASTE.ARC. If no file is specified, then the list is read from standard input. When the N option (suppress Notes) is used with the L (List files) command, it causes a terse listing of filenames only, suitable for use with pipes and redirection. This can be combined with indirection to easily perform many tasks. For example, the command: arc ln waste | arc a trash @ would cause ARC to add files to TRASH.ARC based on the names of the files stored in WASTE.ARC. If by some chance you want to archive a file whose ____ name really does begin with an at sign, then preceed the name with a forward slash ("/"). For example, to add a file named "@DUST.DAT" to an archive named "TRASHCAN.ARC", you would type: arc a trashcan /@dust.dat The MARC program also allows for indirection. ARC Page 21 RAMDISK SUPPORT If you have a RAMdisk, or other high-speed storage, then you can speed up ARC somewhat by telling it to put its temporary files on the RAMdisk. You do this by setting the ARCTEMP environment string with the MS-DOS SET command. For example, if drive B: is your RAMdisk, then you would type: set ARCTEMP=B: Refer to the MS-DOS manual for more details about the SET command. You need only set the ARCTEMP string once, and ARC will use it from then on until you change its value or reboot your system. If ARC does not find an environment string named ARCTEMP, then it looks for one named TEMP to use instead. Several packages already use the TEMP string for exactly this purpose. If you have need of an environment string named TEMP for something else, then you should be sure to define ARCTEMP. There are a limited number of temporary files created by ARC. The Convert command uses a file named "$ARCTEMP.CVT" to hold each file as it is being converted. The Run command also creates a temporary file, which has the name "$ARCTEMP", and whose extension matches that of the file being run. ARC Page 22 VERSION NUMBERS There seems to be some confusion about our version numbering scheme. All of our version numbers are given as a number with two decimal places. The units indicate a major revision, such as adding a new packing algorithm. The first decimal place (tenths) indicates a minor revision that is not essential, but which may be desired. The second decimal place (hundredths) indicates a trivial revision that will probably only be desired by specific individuals or by die-hard "latest version" fanatics. ARC also displays its date and time of last edit. A change of the date and time without a corresponding change in version number indicates a truly trivial change, such as fixing a spelling error. To sum up: If the units change, then you should get the newer version as soon as you can. If the tenths change, then you may want to get the newer version, but there's no hurry. If anything else changes, then you probably shouldn't bother. ARC Page 23 COMMON QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Here are some of the more common questions we've received about ARC, along with their answers: Q: Why does ARC run out of room if I make an archive bigger than about 180k? A: Because you are working on a floppy disk. ARC creates a copy of your archive, incorporating any new files as it goes. When it is done, it deletes the original and renames the new one. There are a number of reasons for doing it this way, one being that your original archive is still intact if anything happens while ARC is running. You can save some space by using drive specifiers and having the archive and the files to add on separate disks, but you still won't be able to make an archive larger than about 180k. If you need to make a larger archive, and if you have a fixed disk, then you can create the archive on the fixed disk and then copy it to the floppy. Q: I've seen an ARC.COM and an ARC.EXE. Which one is the right one? A: ARC.EXE. One or more people have been running ARC through a utility that converts an ".EXE" file to a ".COM" file. But this utility is designed to save _____ space, not speed. On ARC it saves about 250 bytes, and makes no measurable difference in program speed. We've decided that the savings are not worth the extra step in development in this case. Q: How can I get the latest version of ARC? A: ARC updates are distributed through normal shareware channels. We also ship a program update disk on every order of $50 or more. Also, please refer to the next section for information about our maintenance contracts. ARC Page 24 Q: Can I distribute my public domain or shareware program in an ARC format archive? A: Yes, of course. Q: Can I use ARC to distribute my commercial software package? A: Yes, provided that you obtain a commercial distribution license from us. Please contact us for details. Q: Why not allow me to select which method of compression I want ARC to use? A: It would needlessly complicate ARC, both internally and in use. The exact nature of the compression methods used are complex, and quite different. The only sure way to tell which will be best in any given case is to analyze the data, as ARC does. The method chosen may not always be what you expect. Q: ARC keeps giving me an odd error message. It says "Drive not ready. Abort, Retry, Ignore?" What does this mean? A: Close the latches ("doors") on your floppy disk drives, then press the "R" key. Q: How can I tell ARC to make an archive that goes on more than one floppy disk? A: Create the archive on your fixed disk, and then use the BACKUP command (or other backup utility). ARC Page 25 MAINTENANCE CONTRACTS Registered users of ARC receive 30 days of telephone support at no extra charge. If you wish, you can extend this by purchasing a maintenance contract. A maintenance contract costs $50 per year. In addition to telephone support you also receive free updates to ARC as soon as they are available, and a ______ _____ free subscription to Making Waves, the SEA customer support newsletter. ARC Page 26 REVISION HISTORY ____________________ CHANGES IN VERSION 5 The Move command used to delete the files as it went. It now waits until it is finished updating the ___ archive, and deletes them all at once. (You did know that Move is just an Add where the file gets deleted, didn't you?) This, along with the changes made in version 4.5, means that it is now much safer to interrupt ARC while it is working. The Print command no longer prints the name of each file. Instead, it prints a formfeed after each file. The Run command now supports BASICA programs. Also, the filename extension is no longer required on the Run command. The Garble option was added. It provides a convenient means of low level data security for the casual user. Use it sparingly, if at all. ARC no longer tests for the presence of $ARCTEMP.CRN before creating a new one. If you interrupt ARC a lot, you'll find this much more convenient. If you happen to have a file named $ARCTEMP.CRN which you want to keep, too bad. Improved error recovery was added when reading an archive. ARC now has a good chance of recovering the data from a corrupted archive (the corrupted entry is still lost, of course). Path support has been added for all commands, though it doesn't do anything on most of them. For example, there isn't much we can do with a path in the List command. But many users will be glad to know that a path can be used when extracting a file, and specifies where the file is to be placed. Support for the TEMP environment string was added. If ARC doesn't find an environment string named ARCTEMP, then it looks for one named TEMP to use instead. Several packages already use the TEMP string for exactly this purpose. ARC Page 27 ARC is now using a different variation of Lempel-Ziv coding, courtesy of Kent Williams, who found it on USENET and adapted it to the IBM PC. The new method differs from the old in several respects. The most significant differences are: 1) Where our previous implementation used a fixed code size of twelve bits, the new one starts with a code size of nine bits and increases it as it needs to. 2) The earlier method tended to "choke" on large files when its string table filled up. The new method has a rather ingenious scheme its authors call ______________ adaptive reset. When it notices that its string table has filled, and its compression ratio is starting to suffer, it clears the table and starts defining new strings. The previous implementation of Lempel-Ziv coding is no longer used to pack files. The "V" (Verbose listing) command distinguishes between the two by referring to the older method as "crunched" (with a lower-case "c"), and the newer method as "Crunched" (with a capital "C"). Rick Moore discovered that ARC was occasionally adding an archive to itself. This would only happen when the archive is in the same directory as the files being added, and its name comes last. This bug has been fixed, though it is still possible to fool ARC into adding an archive to itself by getting tricky with path names. Dana Montgomery found the upper limit on how many files can be added to an archive. There's always been an upper limit, but it depends on memory, and used to be larger than anyone could possibly want (knock on wood). However, the added memory requirements as of version 5.0 lowered this limit into the realm of possibility, somewhere around 300 files. We change some things around, and effectively, there is no longer a limit on how many files you can add at once. ARC will add the files in batches of as many as it can handle at one time. The Run command has been modified to allow passing command line arguments to the program being run. Indirection was added, and the List command was modified to give a terse listing suitable for use with indirection when the N option is employed. ARC Page 28 A bug was found that would keep an archive entry from being encrypted if it was stored without compression. This has now been fixed. If changes are made to a corrupted archive, the corrupted entries are discarded. This makes it possible to lose data accidentally. ARC will now only make changes to a corrupted archive if the W (suppress Warnings) option has been given. Support for a nonstandard variation of Lempel-Ziv was added. Two new utilities, SCANDISK and SQDIR, were added to the ARC program disk. Full program sources for both are included in UNDEL.ARC on the ARC source disk. ______________________ CHANGES IN VERSION 5.3 A minor bug caused earlier versions of ARC to output an extra carriage return on an end of line when dumping text to standard output with the "P" command. This has now been fixed. Greatly enhanced error recovery has been added to deal with corrupted or partially damaged archives. The corrupted data itself is still lost, of course, but ARC will recover everything possible. ARC has been fully ported to Microsoft C version 5.1. This has resulted in a small speed improvement, and should make it easier to port ARC to other operating systems. A new utility, MKSARC, was added to the ARC program disk. Regretfully, we cannot release the program sources for MKSARC. ______________________ CHANGES IN VERSION 6.0 Version 6.0 is a major upgrade for ARC. It is a substantial rewrite that greatly improves overall performance. ARC is now as fast as any comparable program, or faster. The changes are primarily in internal organization of the code, so that versions ported to other operating systems should experience a substantial performance boost as well. ARC Page 29 We've also added support for directories, allowing entire directory trees to be added or moved into an archive, and later extracted. We've also designed and implemented a method whereby versions of ARC ported to other operating systems can record system-specific information in a compatible manner. This includes provisions for longer filenames, more date/time stamps, and even icon bitmaps. Contact us for details or see the comments in the ARC sources if you are interested in using this capability in a version of ARC for a different operating system. ARC Page 30 PROGRAM HISTORY AND CREDITS In its short life thus far, ARC has astounded us with its popularity. We first wrote it in March of 1985 because we wanted an archive utility that used a distributive directory approach, since this has certain advantages over the then popular central directory approach. We added automatic squeezing in version 2 at the prompting of a friend. In version 2.1 we added the code to test for the best compression method. In less than a year we found that our humble little program had spread across the country, and seems to have become a new institution. We are thankful for the support and appreciation we have received. We hope that you find this program of use. If we have achieved greatness, it is because we have stood upon the shoulders of giants. Nothing is created as a thing unto itself, and ARC is no exception. Therefore, we would like to give credit to the following people, without whose efforts ARC could not exist: Brian W. Kernighan and P. J. Plauger, whose book "Software Tools" provided many of the ideas behind the distributive directory approach used by ARC. Dick Greenlaw, who wrote the public domain SQ and USQ programs, in which the Huffman squeezing algorithm was first developed. Kent Williams, who graciously allowed us to use his LZWCOM and LZWUNC programs as a basis for our Lempel- Ziv compression logic, and who continues to make valuable contributions. David Schwaderer, whose article in the April 1985 issue of PC Tech Journal provided us with the logic for calculating the CRC 16 bit polynomial. Terry A. Welch, whose article "A Technique for High Performance Data Compression", IEEE Computer Vol 17 No 6 (June 1984) seems to have started all the research on Lempel-Ziv coding. ARC Page 31 Spencer W. Thomas, Jim McKie, Steve Davies, Ken Turkowski, James A. Woods, and Joe Orost, who are the authors of the UNIX compress utility. Karl Schinke, who is the friend that suggested that we add compression to ARC. Alex Jacobs, who in June of 1985 sent us the very first shareware contribution we ever received. And many, many others whom we could not identify. ARC Page 32 BULLETIN BOARDS ARC is distributed mainly through shareware channels. Among other things, this means that ARC is available from many bulletin board systems. In fact, the system operators (sysops) of many bulletin boards have taken to storing almost all of their downloadable files in archives to save themselves disk space and to save their users time. This also makes things more convenient for the bulletin board users, since one archive may contain several programs, any related data files, and the documentation. Many shareware authors have taken to distributing their software in archives to help ensure that the users receive everything. Obviously, we can't do that with ARC. As a result, many of our users have ARC, but don't have the manual. Most of our customer support calls come from people who have never seen the manual, and in many cases didn't even know that one exists! To solve this problem we developed what is in essence a self-unpacking archive. We distribute this as "ARCxxx.EXE", where "xxx" is the current version number. For example, ARC version 6.00 would be distributed as "ARC600.EXE". This program, when run, unpacks itself into a copy of ARC plus its documentation. Now that we've gone to all that work, we'd really appreciate it if you would use this program when you distribute ARC. ARC Page 33 SITE LICENSES Corporate users may wish to obtain a site license for the use of ARC. Please use the order form in this manual to order a site license. Site licenses are granted as of when we receive your payment. License fees vary depending on the number of computers on which ARC will be used, as follows: 1 machine $50 2 to 9 machines $35 per machine 10 to 24 machines $25 per machine 25 to 49 machines $20 per machine 50 or more machines $15 per machine 100 or more machines at one location $1500 Enclosed is a site license agreement, which should be signed and sent with your payment when ordering a commercial site license. A commercial site license does not include additional copies of the ARC program disk and the ARC manual. Instead, you make your own copies of the disk and manual as you need them. If you wish, you can order additional program disks and manuals from us. ARC Page 34 The SEA Utilities COPYRIGHT 1985,86,87,88,89 by System Enhancement Associates, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED LIMITED WARRANTY IMPORTANT NOTICE: IMPORTANT NOTICE: Any use of this software for any period of time for any purpose whatsoever constitutes your unqualified acceptance of this LICENSE and subjects you to all of the terms and conditions set forth below: System Enhancement Associates, Inc. ("SEA") warrants to any Licensee that acquires the program from SEA or an authorized SEA representative ONLY that: 1) All diskettes SEA provides constitute an accurate duplication of the software and SEA will replace any diskette found to be defective within 30 days from date of acquisition. SEA will not honor this warranty if the diskette has been subjected to physical abuse, or used in defective or non- compatible equipment. 2) SEA's software will perform substantially as described in the documentation SEA regularly supplies with that software, if operated as prescribed in such documentation including the hardware and software environment specified. 3) If a significant defect in any program is found, Licensee's only remedy shall be to receive refund of the actual fee Licensee paid for such defective program. In no event will such a refund exceed the fee SEA charges for such program. 4) SEA makes no warranty or representation that the software will be error free nor that its use by Licensee will be uninterrupted. Except as provided above, SEA disclaims all other warranties, either express or implied, including but not limited to any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. Licensee agrees to take full responsibility for the selection of and any use whatsoever made of the software. IN NO EVENT WILL SEA BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER (INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION OR THE LIKE) ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF, INTERRUPTION IN THE USE OF, OR INABILITY TO USE THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF SEA HAS BEEN ADVISED OF ANY POSSIBILITY OR LIKELYHOOD OF SUCH DAMAGES. TABLE OF CONTENTS _______ ____ Section Page Introduction .................................... 39 MKSARC .......................................... 39 ARCE ............................................ 40 MARC ............................................ 41 ARCP and MARCP .................................. 42 ASCII ........................................... 43 CHMOD ........................................... 44 FAKEY ........................................... 45 Hexadecimal BIOS keystroke codes ............ 49 MAKEY ........................................... 51 LF .............................................. 52 PARBOOT ......................................... 61 SCANDISK ........................................ 62 SCROLOCK ........................................ 65 SOFTBELL ........................................ 65 SQDIR ........................................... 66 TASK ............................................ 66 TDIR ............................................ 68 UNDEL ........................................... 68 OHMYGAWD ........................................ 70 Your notes ...................................... 72 BLANK PAGE SEA Tools Page 38 INTRODUCTION The ARC program disk includes several other programs in addition to ARC. These are various utilities created by SEA to do various things, and are included on the disk as our way of thanking you for supporting ARC. The one exception is ARCE.COM, which was written by Vern Buerg and Wayne Chin, and which SEA has licensed to include on the ARC disk as a service to our customers. Full program sources for everything on the ARC disk (with the exception of ARCE and MKSARC) are available from System Enhancement Associates, Inc. We will now describe the various programs that are included on the ARC program disk. ______ MKSARC MKSARC is used to convert an archive into a self- unpacking program. It takes one argument, which is the name of the archive to convert. For example, if you had an archive called "WASTE.ARC" and you typed: MKSARC waste then MKSARC would create a new file called "WASTE.EXE" which would be a self-unpacking version of "WASTE.ARC" (your original "WASTE.ARC" archive is left untouched). This can now be unpacked simply by typing: waste You can also supply a second argument to specify the name of the resulting program. For example, if you typed: MKSARC waste trash then MKSARC would create a new file called "TRASH.EXE" instead of "WASTE.EXE". At this time only level 5 compatible archives may be turned into self-unpacking programs. SEA Tools Page 39 MKSARC works by adding a self-extraction header program (called SARC) to the beginning of the archive. This adds about 7800 bytes to the length of the archive. SARC recognizes the same options as ARCE, including integrity testing and decryption, and may be told specific files to extract. If a self-unpacking program is given the "/H" option, it will display a brief help screen. Before SARC begins extracting files it first performs an internal integrity check to ensure that the SARC header itself has not been damaged. If it fails the integrity check, it will abort with the message: Unpacker has been corrupted! The files contained in the self-unpacking program may still be extracted with ARC. NOTE: NOTE: The copyright notice that is printed when SARC runs refers to the SARC self-extraction header itself, ___ not the entire self-unpacking archive. ____ ARCE ARCE is a program which is used to extract files from ____ an archive. It will only extract files. It doesn't do anything that ARC can't do, but it is highly optimized for the sole purpose of archive extraction, so it is very small and very fast. The ARCE program has been shown in benchmark tests to be the world's fastest archive extractor. ARCE is used in a fashion very similar to the "ARC E" command (hence the name). The first argument is the name of the archive to extract files from, and may include a drive and path specifier. Up to sixteen additional arguments can be supplied, which specify the files to extract. The wildcard characters "*" and "?" are allowed, as with ARC. If no files are named, then all files are extracted from the archive. If the file being extracted already exists, you are asked whether or not you want to overwrite it. You can use the "/R" option to bypass this. SEA Tools Page 40 For example, if you had an archive named "WASTE.ARC" that you wanted to extract everything from, then you could type: ARCE waste Or if you just wanted to extract the files with a filename extension of ".ASM", you could type: ARCE waste *.asm If you already have a few files from the archive that you want replaced, then you could type: ARCE waste *.asm /R ARCE also has options for extracting to standard output, for testing archive integrity, and for extracting encrypted files. The full documentation for ARCE is included on the ARC program disk. If you run ARCE with no arguments at all, it will give you a brief reminder of how to use it. NOTICE: NOTICE: ARCE is the copyrighted property of Vernon D. Buerg and Wayne Chin. It is included on the ARC program disk as a service to ARC users. Vernon D. Buerg 456 Lakeshire Drive Daly City, CA 94015 RBBS: (415) 994-2944 ____ MARC MARC is used to merge archives created by ARC. MARC moves files from one archive to another without unpacking them. SEA Tools Page 41 MARC is used as follows: MARC <target> <source> [<template> . . .] Where: <target> is the name of the archive to add files to. <source> is the name of the archive to read files from. <template> is one or more file name templates. The wildcard characters "*" and "?" may be used. If no template is supplied, then all of the files in <source> are added to <target>. It is not necessary for the target to exist. If it does not exist, then it is created. Thus, MARC can be used as an "extractor" as well as a "merger". For example, if you wanted to create an archive named "JUNK.ARC", which is to contain all of the files with an extension of ".TXT" which are currently contained in another archive named "WASTE.ARC", then you could type: MARC junk waste *.txt If you wanted to create an archive named "JUNK.ARC", which is to contain all of the files currently in the archives "WASTE.ARC" and "TRASH.ARC", you could type: MARC junk waste MARC junk trash ______________ ARCP and MARCP ARCP and MARCP are "protected mode" versions of ARC and MARC which will run under the OS/2 operating system. They function exactly the same as their MS-DOS counterparts. SEA Tools Page 42 _____ ASCII ASCII is a program that scans a file for strings of printable text. This can be handy in several situations, like checking out an upload for "gotcha" messages, peeking at a new adventure game for hints, and many other practical endeavors. ASCII takes one argument, the name of the file to examine. How ASCII functions may be modified by using the following command line options: /m<min> Minimum; ASCII normally does not consider text to be a "string" unless it is at least four characters long. This tells ASCII to show any strings that area <min> characters long or longer. /w<width> Width; ASCII normally formats its output for an 80-column screen. This tells ASCII to format for a <width> columns screen. /l<length> Length; ASCII normally scrolls its output to the screen continuously. This tells ASCII to stop with a "more" prompt every <length> lines. /f Filter; ASCII normally reads from a file you specify. This tells ASCII to instead read from "standard input". /r Raw output; ASCII normally prints the text it finds in a human-readable report giving offsets into the file. This tells ASCII to skip the offsets and just dump out the text. The output is still broken by an end-of-line every 80 columns (or whatever you specify with the /w option). /x eXtended character set; ASCII normally displays only printable ASCII characters. This tells ASCII to also show carriage returns (as a left pointing arrow), linefeeds (as a down pointing arrow) and horizontal tabs (as a right pointing arrow). SEA Tools Page 43 For example, if you wanted to see all of the printable text strings in a file called TRASH.EXE, with the output formatted for a 40-column screen and with a pause every 24 lines, you could give the command: ASCII trash.exe /w40 /l24 _____ CHMOD CHMOD is used to examine and change file attributes. Each attribute is represented by a single letter, as follows: ______ _______ Letter Meaning D Directory. This marks a subdirectory containing more files. This bit cannot be changed. R Read only. The file may be examined, but may not be altered. H Hidden. The file will not appear in directory searches. S System. This acts like a combination of R and H, which it usually appears with. A Archive. This has nothing to do with the ARC file archive utility. It means that the file has been changed since you last backed up your disk. If you wanted to see what attributes are presently set on all ofthe files in your current directory that have an extension of ".COM", you would type: chmod *.com The report you get back would look something like this: IBMBIO.COM -RHS- IBMDOS.COM -RHS- COMMAND.COM ----- SEA Tools Page 44 This shows that the files IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM are saved with the Read only, Hidden, and System attributes, while the file COMMAND.COM has no file attributes. You can alter the file attributes by giving the attribute letters after the filename. Use lowercase to signal that you want that attribute turned off, or uppercase to indicate that you want it on. For example, if you wanted to alter AUTOEXEC.BAT to make it read only and hidden, and at the same time you want to turn off the archive bit, you would type: chmod autoexec.bat RHa Any attributes you don't specify are left unchanged. _____ FAKEY FAKEY is used to fake sequences of keystrokes. It is especially useful in batch files, where it can be used to "pre-load" input for programs. It is faking it at the point where BIOS is called. It will not affect programs that bypass BIOS for their input. FAKEY can fake keyboard input for almost any program, except for certain resident utilities. FAKEY takes one or more arguments, separated by spaces. Each argument can be any one of the following: 1) A text literal enclosed in quotes. See below. 2) A decimal number, indicating the ASCII value of a character. 3) A hexadecimal number of up to four digits, preceeded by an ampersand. 4) A mnemonic value indicating a particular keystroke. None of these are case sensitive, except literal text in quotes. Hex digits, mnemonics, and so forth can be entered in any combination of upper and lower case. SEA Tools Page 45 If an argument indicates a character value, then the character value is filled out to include a scan code value. Where more than one scan code is possible (such as Backspace or Ctrl H), the more "conventional" choice is made (ie. Backspace instead of Ctrl H, top row instead of number pad, etc.) A text literal is enclosed in quotes, and may contain special sequences. The special sequences currently defined are: 1) An uparrow followed by a character from A to Z (in this case really "at sign" to "underline"), indicating the equivalent control key. 2) An exclamation mark followed by a digit or a character from A to Z, indicating the equivalent alter key. 3) A backslash followed by another character. Defined uses are: \r for a return or enter \t for a tab \b for a backspace \e for an escape \anything else, for a literal character. Thus \" is a quote, \\ is a backslash, etc. A mnemonic can be an uparrow, exclamation mark, or backslash followed by a character, in which case it means the same thing as in a text literal. The following additional mnemonics are also defined: Standard ASCII mnemonics: NUL SOH STX ETX EOT ENQ ACK BEL BS HT LF VT FF CR SO SI DLE DC1 DC2 DC3 DC4 NAK SYN ETB CAN EM SUB ESC FS GS RS US SP RUB Cursor movement keypad mnemonics: UP DOWN LEFT RITE HOME END PGUP PGDN INS DEL PLUS DASH SEA Tools Page 46 Function key mnemonics: Fn for normal Sn for shifted Cn for control An for alter Where "n" is a number from 1 to 10. For example, A10 means Alt F10. Special mnemonics: TOSS Causes all previous pending keystrokes to be thrown away. Does not affect the sequence being defined. PSCR Causes whatever is on the screen to be printed on the printer. WAIT <n> Causes a pause for <n> seconds in the input stream. Keystrokes will not appear to be available for the duration of the wait. The maximum wait is 255 seconds. BEEP Causes FAKEY to emit a warbling tone. BOOT Causes a warm system boot, as if the user had typed "Ctrl-Alt-Del". COLD Causes a cold system boot, as if the user had turned the power off and on again. LOAD <n> Only valid when first running FAKEY. Causes FAKEY to load without displaying the help screen, and also tells FAKEY to reserve room for up to <n> keystrokes. If <n> is not given, then FAKEY will save room for up to 200 keystrokes. If FAKEY is run without arguments, then it displays a brief help screen to remind you of various special characters and mnemonics. This help screen can be bypassed (to load FAKEY from your AUTOEXEC.BAT, for example) by giving FAKEY a load command, as follows: fakey load SEA Tools Page 47 The TOSS mnemonic takes effect at the point where FAKEY is run. It serves to discard faked keystrokes which an earlier program didn't use. The other special mnemonics take effect at the point where they are first scanned by the operating system. This is not always when you might think. DOS (along with many applications programs) scans the keyboard buffer to see if anything is pending at many points, so things may take effect sooner than you would expect. For example, if your batch file contained: fakey ^C myprog then "myprog" would not be run. DOS would check the keyboard after running FAKEY and before running the next program, and would see the pending control C. Your batch file would stop while DOS asks: Terminate batch file (y/n)? You probably don't want that. So instead, you should say: fakey wait 1 ^C myprog This would cause a one second delay before the control C shows up in the keyboard buffer. If this doesn't make sense, then don't worry too much. This is all meant to address a few special cases which don't normally arise. Hexadecimal literals: These can be used to fake any keystroke whatsoever, including ones that don't actually exist (though we're not sure why you'd want to do that). Use the table following to pick out the keystroke you want. For example, a shifted keypad 5 would be: fakey &4C35 A table entry of "--" means you can't get that combination out of BIOS. SEA Tools Page 48 BIOS keystroke codes, hexadecimal ___ ______ _____ _______ _____ Key Normal Shift Control Alter Esc 011B 011B 011B -- 1! 0231 '1' 0221 '!' -- 7800 2@ 0332 '2' 0340 '@' 0300 7900 3# 0433 '3' 0423 '#' -- 7A00 4$ 0534 '4' 0524 '$' -- 7B00 5% 0635 '5' 0625 '%' -- 7C00 6^ 0736 '6' 075E '^' 071E 7D00 7& 0837 '7' 0826 '&' -- 7E00 8* 0938 '8' 092A '*' -- 7F00 9( 0A39 '9' 0A28 '(' -- 8000 0) 0B30 '0' 0B29 ')' -- 8100 -_ 0C2D '-' 0C5F '_' 0C1F 8200 =+ 0D3D '=' 0D2B '+' -- 8300 BkSpc 0E08 0E08 0E7F -- tab 0F09 0F00 -- -- q 1071 'q' 1051 'Q' 1011 1000 w 1177 'w' 1157 'W' 1117 1100 e 1265 'e' 1245 'E' 1205 1200 r 1372 'r' 1352 'R' 1312 1300 t 1474 't' 1454 'T' 1414 1400 y 1579 'y' 1559 'Y' 1519 1500 u 1675 'u' 1655 'U' 1615 1600 i 1769 'i' 1749 'I' 1709 1700 o 186F 'o' 184F 'O' 180F 1800 p 1970 'p' 1950 'P' 1910 1900 [{ 1A5B '[' 1A7B '{' 1A1B -- ]} 1B5D ']' 1B7D '}' 1B1D -- enter 1C0D 1C0D 1C0A -- Ctrl -- -- -- -- a 1E61 'a' 1E41 'A' 1E01 1E00 s 1F73 's' 1F53 'S' 1F13 1F00 d 2064 'd' 2044 'D' 2004 2000 f 2166 'f' 2146 'F' 2106 2100 g 2267 'g' 2247 'G' 2207 2200 h 2368 'h' 2348 'H' 2308 2300 j 246A 'j' 244A 'J' 240A 2400 k 256B 'k' 254B 'K' 250B 2500 l 266C 'l' 264C 'L' 260C 2600 ;: 273B ';' 273A ':' -- -- '" 2827 ''' 2822 '"' -- -- `~ 2960 '`' 297E '~' -- -- l shift -- -- -- -- \| 2B5C '\' 2B7C '|' 2B1C -- z 2C7A 'z' 2C5A 'Z' 2C1A 2C00 x 2D78 'x' 2D58 'X' 2D18 2D00 c 2E63 'c' 2E43 'C' 2E03 2E00 v 2F76 'v' 2F56 'V' 2F16 2F00 SEA Tools Page 49 b 3062 'b' 3042 'B' 3002 3000 n 316E 'n' 314E 'N' 310E 3100 m 326D 'm' 324D 'M' 320D 3200 ,< 332C ',' 333C '<' -- -- .> 342E '.' 343E '>' -- -- /? 352F '/' 353F '?' -- -- r shift -- -- -- -- PrtSc 372A '*' -- 7200 -- Alt -- -- -- -- spacebar 3920 ' ' 3920 ' ' 3920 3920 CapsLock -- -- -- -- F1 3B00 5400 5E00 6800 F2 3C00 5500 5F00 6900 F3 3D00 5600 6000 6A00 F4 3E00 5700 6100 6B00 F5 3F00 5800 6200 6C00 F6 4000 5900 6300 6D00 F7 4100 5A00 6400 6E00 F8 4200 5B00 6500 6F00 F9 4300 5C00 6600 7000 F10 4400 5D00 6700 7100 NumLock -- -- -- -- Scroll -- -- -- -- 7 Home 4700 4737 '7' 7700 -- 8 up 4800 4838 '8' -- -- 9 PgUp 4900 4939 '9' 8400 -- grey - 4A2D '-' 4A2D '-' -- -- 4 left 4B00 4B34 '4' 7300 -- 5 -- 4C35 '5' -- -- 6 right 4D00 4D36 '6' 7400 -- grey + 4E2B '+' 4E2B '+' -- -- 1 End 4F00 4F31 '1' 7500 -- 2 down 5000 5032 '2' -- -- 3 PgDn 5100 5133 '3' 7600 -- Ins 5200 5230 '0' -- -- Del 5300 532E '.' -- -- SEA Tools Page 50 _____ MAKEY MAKEY is a companion program to FAKEY, which must be loaded before MAKEY is. MAKEY defines a "one key macro". To define a key macro with MAKEY, hit the top row "2" key while holding down the "Ctrl" key. You should hear three beeps, rising in tone. You are now recording a macro. Type whatever keys you want defined. When you're done, hit the top row "2" key while holding down the "Ctrl" key again. You should hear another three beeps, falling in tone this time. Your macro is now recorded. To use the macro, hit the grey "*" key. Whatever keys you recorded will be played back every time you hit the grey "*" key. MAKEY normally has room to record up to 200 keystrokes (if you run out of room MAKEY will beep at you). You can change the amount of room MAKEY reserves by giving it a number on the command line the _____ first time you run it. For example, loading MAKEY with the command: MAKEY 1000 would cause MAKEY to reserve room for up to one thousand keystrokes. FAKEY must have been loaded with enough room to hold whatever macro MAKEY is holding. SEA Tools Page 51 __ LF LF is a utility designed to simplify the manipulation of large numbers of files. LF is a menu driven system in which the user is presented with a menu of files in her current directory. This may be either a full menu of all files, or a subset menu of selected files. To invoke LF, type a command of the form: LF [path][template] The template, which is optional, is a standard MS/DOS filename template, such as you would use for the COPY or ERASE commands. If you give a path name, then that will be your starting directory. For example, if you wanted to work on all files with an extension of ".MAC", you would type: LF *.MAC Or, if you wished to work on all files whose names begin with "X", you would type: LF X*.* Or, to work on all files in your current directory, you could simply type: LF The LF file menu has the following columns: 1) The command area. This is where you type in any commands which you wish to have performed on the files. See below for more information regarding command strings. This area may also contain a blue asterisk ("*"), to indicate that a command was performed on this file the last time you invoked any commands. SEA Tools Page 52 2) The filename/extension. This is the name and extension of the file covered by a given line on your screen. This is normally shown in white. However, the name will turn red if the file no longer exists or is marked for deletion. Also, the name will be green if LF detects that the file was modified by your last command. If the filename/extension is in magenta (purple), then the file is a subdirectory. You may "zoom in" on it with the Alter Z command, but you may not edit or list it. 3) The file size. This is how big (in bytes) the file is. 4) The date/time area. This is the date and time of the last time the file was created or modified. One line of the files menu will be in reverse color (normally black on white). This line is your current line, and the file it refers to is your current file. You may move this line using your up and down cursor movement keys. The top of the files menu contains the following fields: 1) The disk status box. This reports the size of your disk, and the number of bytes remaining. The room remaining will be green if you have more than half of your disk available. It will turn yellow when you use up half of your disk. It will turn red when only ten percent of your disk remains, and it will start to flash when you are out of room. 2) The file counters. This reports how many files you are currently looking at on your files menu. If you have marked any files for deletion, the number of files to be deleted will also be shown. 3) The current search path. This is the specifier which is being used to select the files on your file menu. 4) The prompting/status error. If LF asks you any questions, they will be asked here. Also, status messages are shown here in white, and error messages in red. SEA Tools Page 53 The bottom line of your screen is there to remind you of which function keys do what. Your function keys are used to carry out several common functions, which can be summarized as follows: F1: Edit F2: Sort by name F3: Browse F4: Sort by type F5: Execute F6: Sort by size F7: Update F8: Sort by date F9: Invoke F10: Exit These are explained in more detail below: F1: Edit Your F1 key is used to invoke your editor on your current file. You may not edit a subdirectory. You may select anything you wish for your editor. See the section below on setting your environment strings. If you have not specified an editor, then EDLIN is used. It is assumed that you have used the PATH command in MS-DOS so that your editor may be invoked from any directory. F3: Browse Your F3 key is used to invoke your browse module on your current file. You may not browse a subdirectory. As with the F1 key, you may choose anything you wish as your browse module. See the section below on setting your environment strings. We highly recommend Vern Buerg's excellent LIST program as a browse utility. If you have not specified a browser, then the TYPE command is used. Again, it is assumed that your command search path is such that the browse command may be given from any directory. SEA Tools Page 54 F5: Exec Your F5 key is used to execute a program. When you press the F5 key, the name of the file on your current line is given as a system command. The menu disappears while your command is executed. When your command has finished, you will be asked to strike any key (which will be discarded) before your file menu is restored. If you press the F10 key, then the menu is not redrawn, and LF terminates. F7: Update Your F7 key is used to refresh your menu. Your list of files is read from scratch, and any deleted files are forgotten. Also, your menu is redrawn from scratch, so this may be useful if your menu is destroyed for any reason. F9: Invoke Your F9 key is used to invoke any pending commands or deletions. If any deletions are pending, you will be asked to confirm the deletions before they take place. If any commands are pending, they will be invoked. Your menu will disappear while the commands are being processed so that you may see what happens, and you will be asked to strike a key before the menu will return. If you strike the F10 key, then the menu is not redrawn, and LF terminates. ______ Deletions are performed before commands. F2: S name Your F2 key is used to sort your menu by file names (which is the default). Your menu of files will be resorted, and you will be reset to the top of the menu. F4: S type Your F4 key is used to sort your menu by filename extensions, then by names. This is useful for grouping your files by "type". F6: S size Your F6 key is used to sort your menu by reverse order of file size. That is, the largest file first and the smallest file last. If any files are the same size, they will be in order of filename/extension. SEA Tools Page 55 F8: S date Your F8 key is used to sort your menu by reverse order of date and time last modified. That is, the newest file first, and the oldest file last. If any files where last modified at the same time, they will be in order of filename/extension. F10: Exit Your F10 key is used to exit from LF. When you press this key, LF will clear the screen, bid you adieu, and return you to MS-DOS. Your alter keys are used to carry out various other actions, which are deemed to be less common than the actions performed by your function keys. These are as follows: Alter N Name; Changes your menu to show all files which have the same name as your current file. Alter E Extension; Changes your menu to show all files which have the same extension as your current file. Alter C Command; Prompts you for a command, which is passed unchanged to MS-DOS. Your file menu disappears during the command, and you are asked to strike a key before the menu returns. If you strike F10, then the menu is not redrawn, and LF terminates. Alter D Directory; Prompts you for a new directory name, and shifts to that directory. Alter T Template; Prompts you for a new search template, and updates your menu to show the files specified by the new template. Alter F Floppy; Prompts you for a new drive letter, and then moves to your current directory on that drive. Alter Z Zoom; If your current file is a directory, then this "zooms in" on it, making it your current directory. SEA Tools Page 56 Alter P Pop; If your current directory is not the root directory, then this "pops you up" one level, making your old current directory your new current file. Alter H Help; Gives a brief run down on which keys do what. The following keys may also be used to move around your menu and manipulate your files: Cursor Up Moves the white bar up one line, making the file there your current file. Cursor Down Moves the white bar down one line, making the file there your current file. PgUp Moves up one page, and places the white bar at the top of the new page. PgDn Moves down one page, and places the white bar at the top of the new page. Home Moves up to the top of your file menu, making the first file your current file. End Moves down to the end of your file menu, making the last file your current file. Delete Marks your current file for deletion, and then moves the white bar down one line. If your current file is a subdirectory, then it cannot be deleted unless it is empty. Escape Discards any command for your current file, and removes its deletion mark (if any). " (quote) Or, in this case, ditto. When you press this key, LF repeats the last command you typed, and then moves the white bar down one line. Most of the power of LF comes from using this. <text> Enters or adds to the command string for your current file (see below). SEA Tools Page 57 Left arrows Removes one character from the end of the command string for your current file. Command strings (in conjunction with the ditto command, above) are the very heart of what makes LF such a useful tool. You can type whatever you wish into the command area in front of any file. Then, when you press the F9 key, your commands are invoked. Unless you specify otherwise, your command string will have the filename/extension of its file appended to it before it is invoked. For example, if the line for a file named "WHATSUP.DOC" had a command string of "Ehhh", then pressing F9 would cause LF to give a system command of: Ehhh WHATSUP.DOC You specify otherwise by embedding one or more specifiers in your command string. A specifier consists of an ampersand ("&") optionally followed by a letter, which may be in upper or lower case. The following specifiers are currently defined: &n Name; This is replaced by the name of the file, with no extension. &e Extension; This is replaced by the extension of the file, with no name. The dot is included. &f Filename; This is replaced by the name of the file followed by the extension, with the dot (if any) in the middle. & This is the same as "&f", and is shorter to type. &d Directory; This is replaced by the name of the current directory, without the trailing backslash. &p Pathname; This is replaced by the full pathname, including drive and directory, of the current file. This is equivalent to "&d\&f" (or "&d\&"). &x Exception; This is replaced by nothing. It does, however, count as a specifier and thus keeps the filename and extension from being appended to the command string. SEA Tools Page 58 For example, if the file "WHATSUP.DOC" had a command string of: copy some&e &n\& Then pressing F9 would cause LF to give the system command: copy some.DOC WHATSUP\WHATSUP.DOC As a somewhat more practical example, suppose that you wanted to sort several files. In each case you want the sorted output to go in a file with the same name as the original, but with an extension of ".SRT". To do that with LF you would place the white bar on the first file, and type a command string of: sort <& >&n.SRT Then you would run the white bar down over all of the other files, hitting "ditto" on each one. Then hit F9 and go grab a cup of coffee while your system sorts its heart out. MS-DOS environment strings are used to tell LF what commands should be given for certain commonly performed actions. Please refer to the MS-DOS manual for complete information regarding the setting and use of environment strings. The following environment strings are used by LF: LFEDIT This string contains the command to give to edit a file when the F1 key is pressed. If this string is not set, then the command "EDLIN" is given. LFBROWSE This string contains the command to give to examine a file when the F3 key is pressed. If this string is not set, then the command "TYPE" is given. SEA Tools Page 59 Pressing one of these keys causes LF to give a system command of the appropriate word followed by the filename and extension of your current file. For example, if LFEDIT is not set, and your white bar is on a line for a file named "WHATSUP. DOC", then pressing the F1 key would cause LF to give the system command: EDLIN WHATSUP.DOC If, as an example, you prefer to use an editor named LEO, then before running LF you would give the MS-DOS command: set LFEDIT=LEO LF uses one other environment string, "LF=", to set parameters on how you would like LF to work. The LF string can contain any of the following: B BIOS; LF Normally does all of its screen output by writing directly to the screen buffer. In some cases that might not be a good idea. This tells LF to do all of its output by making legal BIOS calls. 1 One screen; This tells LF to use only one display for all of its activities. This is the default. 2 Two screens; This tells LF to use two displays. This will only work if your system has both a ___ color display and a monochrome display. LF will do all of its own output on the color screen, and will invoke commands on the monochrome display. H Hidden; LF does not normally show hidden or system files. This tells LF to show them. C Confirm deletes; This tells LF to ask for confirmation before deleting files, and is the default. U Unconfirmed deletes; This tells LF to delete files without asking for confirmation. This is a bit faster, and is not too dangerous. SEA Tools Page 60 D Delete at once; This tells LF to delete a file the instant you mark it by hitting the "Del" key. ____ ____ This is very fast, and very dangerous. X This tells LF to redraw its screen immediately when it finishes executing commands. This bypasses the "hit a key to continue" message. K This tells LF to do the "hit a key to continue" bit after all. This is the default. Sx This tells LF to initially sort its display in a particular way, where "x" is one of the following: N to sort by name (default) T to sort by type (extension) S to sort by size D to sort by date Any of the above can be given in any combination of upper or lower case. For example, if you normally want LF to use two displays and to sort its display by extensions, you could put the following statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file: set LF=2st These options can also be given on the command line by preceeding them with a slash. For example, if you wanted to override what you put in the LF= string and bring up LF using only one display, you would type: LF /1 _______ PARBOOT PARBOOT is a deceptively handy little program. It slightly modifies your system so that a parity check will cause a system reboot instead of hanging your system. This can be useful for machines which must run unattended for long periods of time. It should be invoked from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. PARBOOT is also the world's smallest TSR utility. When installed, it requires zero bytes of memory. SEA Tools Page 61 ________ SCANDISK SCANDISK scans a disk for bad sectors. So do lots of other programs, but SCANDISK is different. Awhile back we had a machine where the disk drive would sometimes get an error. So we took a full backup and reformatted the drive. It kept happening. So we started hauling out the disk testers. We tried five separate disk test utilities, and every single one of them did the same thing. They would hit a bad sector, pause on it awhile with the disk grinding ___ away, and then report it as good. We could see that ____ the sector was no good, we could hear it, but every single disk tester we tried would let it go. We got so disgusted that we sat down and wrote our own. When a program asks MS-DOS to read a disk sector, MS-DOS asks BIOS to go read it. If BIOS reports an error, MS-DOS tries again. In fact, MS-DOS will keep trying several times before finally reporting an error. So it's possible to have a sector which is questionable, but which looks good. MS-DOS may need to retry several times before it actually gets the data, but this is shielded from the program that asked for the sector. That's great for most programs. It's just the right _____ thing to do. But it's just the wrong thing to do when you're trying to find out which sectors are starting to go bad. You don't want to know which ones have already gone bad (it's too late then -- you already lost the data). You want to know which ones are still readable but are starting to go sour so you can get your data off while you still have a chance. But if MS-DOS is hiding the error, how can you tell? If MS-DOS has to reread a sector, the read is going to take longer than normal. Also, MS-DOS resets the disk between retries, which takes even more time. So SCANDISK scans the disk, reading each sector, and on every read it's got a stopwatch in hand to see how long MS-DOS takes to read it. If MS-DOS reports an error, then we mark it bad (so far we're just like everyone else), but if MS-DOS says that the sector is okay, but it took a long time to read, then we SEA Tools Page 62 remember that it's questionable. When the run is finished we tell you how many questionable sectors we found, and if you say so we'll mark them as bad. Not only that, but if a questionable sector is in use by a file we'll shift the data to someplace safe. SCANDISK takes one or two arguments. The first argument is which disk to scan. The second argument is how many times to scan that disk. If you don't say how many times, then it scans once. If you say zero times, then it scans repeatedly until told to stop. For example, if you wanted to scan your C: drive once, you would type: scandisk c: If you wanted to scan your D: drive five times, you would type: scandisk d: 5 If you wanted to scan your B: drive continuously, you would type: scandisk b: 0 How SCANDISK works can be modified by the following command-line options: /t<n> Ticks; SCANDISK normally allows twenty clock ticks to elapse during a read before it calls a sector questionable. Twenty ticks is a shade over a second, so "questionable" might not be a strong enough word. This option sets threshold at <n> clock ticks. If you ___ set the threshold too low SCANDISK will report many more bad clusters than you really have. Most fixed disks should be able to read a cluster in five or six clock ticks, and most floppies should take no more than ten clock ticks. /s Skip; This tells SCANDISK to skip over clusters that have already been locked out. This can speed things up considerably on a disk with a lot of bad clusters. SEA Tools Page 63 /l Large directory; This tells SCANDISK that your directory is too large to hold. ___ SCANDISK will not move data off of questionable clusters if you use this option. SCANDISK will tell you if you need to use this option. /a Autopilot; When SCANDISK finishes its run it asks for confirmation before making any irreversable changes to your disk. This tells SCANDISK to go ahead and make the changes without asking. /u Unlock; This tells SCANDISK to recheck clusters that had been locked out, and to unlock any that appear okay. Use this with extreme caution (or not at all). /b BIOS; This tells SCANDISK to use legal BIOS calls for all of its output. Things go faster if you don't use this, but there may be some situations where you need it. For example, if you wanted SCANDISK to make three passes over your C: drive, skipping bad clusters and allowing up to five clock ticks on a read, you would use the command: scandisk C: 3 /s /t5 So what happened with that drive that started all this? We ran SCANDISK on it with the options: scandisk d: 0 /st5 and we let it run overnight. In the morning we saw that SCANDISK had not found any more bad sectors in its last twenty passes, so we stopped it. The drive is still in use, and we haven't had a problem with it since. SEA Tools Page 64 ________ SCROLOCK There must be some reason why eight million PC's have "Scroll Lock" keys. All told, that adds up to quite a lot of keys out there that don't do anything. But until that use shows up, there's SCROLOCK. When you run SCROLOCK it starts monitoring that Scroll Lock key, and makes it do something like what its name implies. In other words, it make the screen stop scrolling when you hit Scroll Lock. Hit Scroll Lock again and your screen will start scrolling again. ___ There are one or two programs out there that use the Scroll Lock key. In particular, the PC-Write editor uses Scroll Lock to switch between "overwrite" and "pushright" modes. So if you run SCROLOCK again it will deactivate itself. Running it yet again makes it reactivate itself, and so on. When you run SCROLOCK it returns an error level of zero if it deactivated, or one if it reactivated. Thus, if for example you were writing a batch file where at one point you want SCROLOCK to be deactivated, you would say: scrolock if errorlevel 1 scrolock ________ SOFTBELL SOFTBELL is for those of us who don't like their machines making loud beeping noises. When you run SOFTBELL it modifies the sound of the bell from a loud beep to a soft buzz. This only affects the "control G bell" -- your game programs will be as noisy as ever. SEA Tools Page 65 _____ SQDIR SQDIR squeezes a directory. Why squeeze a directory? Is directory juice good for anything? The method used by the MS-DOS operating system for keeping files in directories is quite adequate for most normal situations. However, things slow down a ___ lot when a directory gets crowded. If you put a few hundred files in one subdirectory, opening one of them becomes a slow process. But there's a further problem. Once a directory has had several hundred files in it, the deleted entries stick around. This is good for UNDEL, but not always so good for everything else because opening a file _____ will still be slow even after most of the files are deleted. Enter SQDIR. SQDIR reads in the directory and rewrites it, minus the deleted files, thus speeding up file access and quite possibly recovering some disk space. SQDIR takes one argument, the name of the directory to squeeze. For example, if you wanted to squeeze a directory named "D:\MAIL\MESSAGES" you would type: sqdir d:\mail\messages SQDIR knows about one option switch, "/S", which tells it to squeeze all subdirectories of the directory as well. For example, if you wanted to squeeze the "D:\MAIL" directory and all directories in it, you would type: sqdir d:\mail /s ____ TASK TASK (which stands for "Timed ASK") is used to ask "yes or no" questions from a batch file, while placing a time limit on how long it will wait for an answer. It can also be used just as a delay timer. TASK reports the result by returning an error level of zero if the answer was "No", or one if the answer was "Yes", or two if no answer was given. SEA Tools Page 66 For example, suppose that you wanted your AUTOEXEC.BAT to ask you first before it starts loading up all of your popup gizmos, thus giving you the option of booting a "clean" system. You could do it thusly: task Do you want this neat stuff? if not errorlevel 1 goto vanilla fakey load makey scrolock softbell parboot :vanilla An answer of "Yes", or no answer at all in twenty seconds, will cause the "if" to fail, and will thus load up some nifty stuff. But an answer of "No" will return an error level of zero, thus making the "if" true, and causing the batch file to skip over all those goodies. If you'd rather word that question differently, then you can do that too, like so: task Do you want a vanilla system? if not errorlevel 2 if errorlevel 1 goto vanilla If the first argument is a number, then TASK treats it as the number of seconds to wait for an answer. For example, if you wanted to allow five seconds instead of twenty seconds, you'd say: task 5 Do you want a vanilla system? If you set a limit of zero seconds, then there is no time limit and TASK will wait forever. If you set a time limit, but you don't ask a question, then TASK becomes a delay timer. For example, the command: task 5 just pauses for five seconds without asking anything. SEA Tools Page 67 ____ TDIR TDIR is one of those programs that doesn't look like much, but if you use it for a day you'll wonder how you ever got along without it. It does a short directory listing sorted by filename extension. Use it the same way you'd use the MS-DOS "DIR" command. Try it -- you'll like it. _____ UNDEL This is used to "undelete" a file which was accidentally deleted. ________ ___ ________ WARNING: WARNING: The MS-DOS operating system is not designed with undeletion in mind. Any undelete ____ process must make assumptions that might not be valid in any particular situation, and ____ must access your disk in ways that are outside the bounds of the operating system. ______ Undeletion is always an inherently risky business. The MS-DOS operating system isn't designed to allow for "undeleting" a file. In theory, once a file is deleted it is gone forever. However, it is possible, sometimes, to reconstruct where a file was located, and to recreate it. You have the best chance of undeleting a file if it has been recently copied or _______ edited, and if nothing has been done to the disk since the file was deleted. UNDEL takes one argument, which is the name of a file to undelete. Any valid filename may be given. Path names are allowed, wildcards are not. For example, to undelete a file that used to be called JUNK.TXT, you would type: undel junk.txt Pretty simple, eh? SEA Tools Page 68 How UNDEL operates can be altered by use of command line switches. A switch is a slash or a dash followed by a letter. UNDEL recognizes the following options: /l List deleted files. This will produce a list of all deleted files in your current directory. Each filename will begin with a question mark. This is because of how MS-DOS file deletion works. If you give a name when you use this option, then UNDEL will use it as the name of the directory to search. For example, if you give the command: undel /l D:\TRASHCAN then UNDEL will report all of the deleted files in the D:\TRASHCAN directory. /a Ask about clusters. This causes UNDEL to show you the first few bytes of each cluster as it locates them, giving you the option to accept or reject them. This might be useful in reassembling a badly fragmented text file. /p Partial recovery is okay. Normally UNDEL won't undelete a file unless it thinks it has found all of the deleted clusters. This option tells UNDEL to recover as much as it can find. /r Report status of deleted file. This can be used to assess the chances of recovering a file. /t Give technical data about the disk. UNDEL has to figure out a lot of technical details about your disk in order to work. This option tells UNDEL to report those details. Your best chance of recovering a file is, of course, to not delete it in the first place. But sometimes accidents happen. SEA Tools Page 69 Your second best chance of recovering a file is to: 1) DO NOT delete, move, copy, or create ANY files on the disk after the accidental deletion if at all possible. 2) If you have a tape streamer or other "image" backup, then take a backup before doing anything else. This will give you the ability to retry the undelete endlessly. 3) If you don't have a tape streamer, take a backup anyway. It can't hurt. 4) Use UNDEL to undelete the file. 5) Examine the file. If it isn't right, delete it and try again, this time using the "/a" (ask) option. 6) If UNDEL can't find all of your file, you may want to try the "/p" (partial is okay) option. 7) If none of the above works, then you are out of luck. Your chances of ever recovering your data are slim indeed. But see the next utility. ________ OHMYGAWD So your worst nightmare has happened -- your most vital document has been accidentally deleted and nothing you've tried has worked. Are you totally out of luck? Well, probably, but there's one last thing to try. OHMYGAWD was written to handle just such a case that happened to us. We weren't really sure it would be useful to anyone else -- until it happened again even worse. On the second occasion MS-DOS started giving us the dreaded "Invalid drive specification" message, and our most recent backup was not quite recent enough. What OHMYGAWD does is very simple. It turns all of the free clusters on a disk into files. Every single one of them. When it's done, there will be zero bytes free on the disk. If your data still exists at all, it's in there somewhere! SEA Tools Page 70 OHMYGAWD takes two arguments. The first argument, which must be given, is the drive to do this to. The second argument, which is optional, is how big each of the files should be. File size is expressed in "K" (which is computer jargon for 1,024 characters), and will be rounded up to the nearest whole cluster size. If you don't specify a size, then OHMYGAWD will split your data evenly into as many files as will fit on the disk. Each of the files will be in the root directory, and will have a name of the form: FILEnnnn.OMG where "nnnn" is a number. Suppose for example that your vital data is lost somewhere on the C: drive, and that your editor can handle files up to 64k in size. You might give the command: ohmygawd C: 64 You will then have a whole bunch of files sitting on your C: drive. So what happened when our drive packed it in? First we ran FDISK to recreate the partition. The result was a mess, so we ran FORMAT on it to get it straightened out. Then we ran OHMYGAWD on it and wound up with 147 files, each about 60k in size. We spent a day sifting through them all, and finally recovered everything. It was something of a trip down memory lane, actually. We also found a whole bunch of old correspondence that had been deleted months earlier. We sincerely hope for your sake that you'll never need __ to run OHMYGAWD. But if you ever do need it, you'll be glad you have it! SEA Tools Page 71 NOTES SEA Tools Page 72