Share Gallery 1/share_gal_1.zip/share_gal_1/CO/CO014.ZIP/LOOKFOR.DOC

Text File | 1989-08-24 | 11KB | 218 lines

               LOOKFOR V.3.6 Shareware Edition
               (C) 1988,89 by David L. Trafton

          If any of LOOKFORs messages, including this file,
are unintelligible, your copy may be damaged.

          LOOKFOR is a program for rapidly searching text files
for the occurrences of words and phrases and then displaying the
occurrences in reasonably formatted full-screen context.  Words
and phrases may be joined by the connectors AND and OR and
searched for in a logical context.  The search words are
highlighted and the display may be scrolled or paged through the
text file.  Excerpts may be printed out or accumulated in a new
file for later revision with a word processor.

          An IBM-PC or compatible and MS-DOS 2.0+ are required to
use this program.

          LOOKFOR has been designed to accept search queries in
plain English, although economy of wording is desirable.  For
example, at the DOS command prompt, the entry of:

    "lookfor marsupial and radish or turnip in \diary6\*.*"

would load LOOKFOR and commence a search of all files in root
subdirectory DIARY6 and its subdirectories for the occurrence of
MARSUPIAL(S) within a predetermined proximity to either
RADISH(ES) or TURNIP(S).

          The best way to begin using LOOKFOR is to simply run
the program and follow the prompts.

          <F1> gets HELP at any time.

          <F7> invokes a color selection menu for the display.

          At the "Looking for" prompt, type in the words and
phrases using up to 3 ANDs and any number of ORs.  If the next to
last word is "in", the last word will be treated as a filename.
The query may be up to 64 characters long.

          EVERY "AND" IN THE QUERY MUST BE SATISFIED TO RECORD A
"HIT".  Note that the range within which the ANDed terms must
occur is changeable with the <F2> key.  Specifying a range of 100
characters would establish approximately one line as the range;
300 approximately one sentence; 1000 approximately one screen.
Specifying "document" for the range requires only that all the
ANDed terms of the query appear somewhere in the file.  They will
be highlighted but not otherwise identified by location in that
case.

          Also note that the <F3> key selects whether graphics
characters are searched and displayed or are converted by having
their eighth bit ignored.  Converting is helpful for Wordstar
files, for example.

          A search query is made up of one or more terms joined
with ANDs.  Each term is made up of one or more words or phrases
joined by ORs.

          Endings on words in the searched text are ignored.
Thus, a search for "computer" will find "computer", "computers",
and "computerized".  However, if "computer" is the last word in a
term, placing a space at the end of the word will require that
the word end at that point with a space or other nulled
character.

          An apostrophe may be used as the first character in
the first word of a term as a wildcard to find embedded
occurrences of the word.  Thus, "'computer" will match with
"computer", "minicomputer", and "microcomputer" as well as their
plurals.

          If a filename was not specified in the search query, it
will be asked for next.  Many options are available at this
point.  Using DOS conventions, the default drive may be changed
(for example, enter A:), or the subdirectory may be changed (for
example, enter CD \NEWPATH\MOREPATH or CD.. or CD ONPATH), or a
directory may be viewed (for example, DIR or DIR A:*.TXT).

          Further, the <F4> key selects whether immediately
included subdirectories are to be searched after the parent
subdirectory is searched.  Note that sub-subdirectories may not
be included. If they are to be searched, change subdirectory
using the CD command to get to the parent of the subdirectories
wanted.  Only 1 subdirectory may be specified in the filename
path if included subdirectories are to be searched -- a
2-subdirectory path may be specified if included subdirectories
are skipped.

          After the search has begun, the first file containing
hits will be presented for display.  An option exists for having
all the hits sent to a printer.  This is useful for later
perusal.  Ordinarily, the search results will only be viewed on
the screen.

          Assuming viewing is selected, the left and right cursor
keys move from hit to hit.  The <space bar> may also be used for
jumping to the next hit.  The up and down cursor keys scroll the
display by lines.  The display may be paged with the <PgUp> and
<PgDn> keys, and the display may be jumped to the beginning or
end of the file with the <HOME> and <END> keys.

          When viewing very large files, it will sometimes be
desirable to jump forward and backward in larger increments than
paging allows.  The <F9> and <F10> keys skip in 65 Kilobyte
increments (if possible) and the <Alt-F9> and <Alt-F10> keys skip
in 1 Megabyte increments.  When large blocks of text are skipped
over, the hit counter is reset to the nearest hit.  Pressing the
<-> key toggles highlighting, and the <+> key moves on to the
next file.

          Printing options are available when viewing a file.
Pressing the unshifted <PrtSc> key will print the screen contents
including the heading but not the menu bars.  Pressing the <P>
key will allow the cursor to be moved around on the screen.
Pressing <F5> at any space position inserts a start marker and
<F6> inserts an end marker.  Several pairs of markers may be used
if desired.  The start marker may be omitted for printing from
the beginning of the screen and the end marker may be omitted if
printing goes to the end of the screen.  Markers may be deleted
with the <DEL> key.  Pressing <ENTER> causes the excerpts to be
printed out. If no markers are inserted, the full text on the
screen is printed without header and menu bars.  Thus, with
paging, contiguous screens of text may be printed.

          Similar to the <P> option for printing, pressing the
<S> key allows excerpts to be prepared for a new disk file.  A
new filename is required for each session of LOOKFOR to protect
existing files from being overwritten.  Once an excerpt file has
been created within a session, all subsequent excerpts are
appended to that file.

          Use the <ESC> key to leave any LOOKFOR function.

          When LOOKFOR is in a query mode, pressing the <F8> key
displays the translation table and other options.  All control
characters are permanently nulled to prevent adverse effects on
the search of a file.  The other characters may be optionally
translated, however.  The punctuation marks are normally nulled
to prevent their affecting a search, but they are displayed in
the results.  The lower case characters are translated to upper
case to make searches case insensitive.  The foreign characters
are translated from lower case to upper case for the IBM
multilingual code page, and the other graphics are nulled for
searching but may be displayed if that option is selected from
the query screen.  Follow the displayed instructions for changing
character translations.  Note that the translation table affects
only how the characters of a file are searched -- not how they
are displayed.

          When finished with the table, press <ENTER> and other
options are presented.  The first option presented is to modify
the filename extensions that LOOKFOR skips when searching.  Non-
text files should not be searched.  Typically, such files have
extensions of "COM" or "EXE" if they are programs or "ARC" or
"ZIP" if they are compressed code files.  The next option that
may be set is the line number on the screen where hits appear
when displayed.  Press the number key corresponding to the
desired line.  Another option uses <F10> to toggle the jump ahead
after a hit is found.  NORMAL is for normal density text.  If the
text contains few lines on a screen or the lines are short,
select SLIGHT so that all hits will be shown with the right and
left cursor keys.  Jumping ahead after a hit is recorded is used
to avoid having multiple hits give the same screen for display.

          Press <ENTER> again and note the option of saving the
changes to the LOOKFOR program.  LOOKFOR.COM must be in the
current directory to do this.  All parameters previously selected
with the <Fn> keys (including display colors) will be saved along
with the translation table with one exception: the space
character will always be saved as a null to avoid surprise
results on search queries in future sessions.  It is usually
desirable to be able to find phrases that are interrupted by
variable spacing and punctuation.

          LOOKFOR may be used to just view a file without
searching for anything.  Enter nothing for the search query and
give the filename when prompted.  The program utilizes 64K of
memory, but files of virtually any size can be searched and
viewed. LOOKFOR has a limit of 1000 hits that may be stored. Not
necessarily every hit on a search query will be counted as a hit
because of the jump ahead feature, but every hit should be seen
on the display.

          If an <ESC> is done when viewing one of several
wildcard selected files, the function parameters (except <F4>)
may be changed and the search resumed with the next file by just
pressing <ENTER>.

          LOOKFOR is intended to be distributed free for trial
use.  Any person who adopts the program for his regular personal
use is expected to pay $15 to the author. If adopted by an
organization for its use, the fee for each workstation where
LOOKFOR is used is $15.

          Users of LOOKFOR are expected to make their own copies
of the program.  Modification of the program or resale for more
than the cost of distribution are prohibited.

          The author may be contacted by electronic mail by
posting a message to him on Chevy Chase Board BBS, Alexandria,
VA, [phone].  A routed message may be left for him on any
BBS which is a member of the RelayNet (tm) network, by posting a
message in the RelayNet COMMON conference, addressed to David
Trafton, with the first line as follows:
->CHEVY
There must not be a space between the arrow formed by -> and the
Network ID, CHEVY.

          Considerable effort has been expended to make LOOKFOR
dependable and safe to use.  However, the author cannot be
responsible for any consequences arising from its use.

AUTHOR:          David L. Trafton
                 6309 Stoneham Rd.
                 Bethesda, Md. 20817