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MegaDisc 06 (1988)(MegaDisc Digital Publishing)(AU)[m][WB].zip
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AboutARP
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1988-03-28
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THE AMIGADOS REPLACEMENT PROJECT (ARP)
by Tim Strachan
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
To get the ARP COMMANDS, order Fish Disk 123 from us at Megadisc.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The ARP is one of the best things to have happened to the Amiga
from its inception. Devised by Charlie Heath and Scott Ballantyne with
help from some of the biggest names in Amiga programming, it sets out to
improve AmigaDOS substantially, and it succeeds. Essentially, what they
have done is to replace most DOS commands (and eventually all) with
alternative, compatible, more consistent commands written in machine code,
with the result being smaller, faster commands and a more flexible,
consistent and powerful user interface.
The original DOS commands had some inconsistency, some accepting
multiple files, others accepting wildcards or pattern-matching, and some
accepting both. ARP commands have incorporated all these capabilities in
those commands which should have them. Hence special cases don't have to
be remembered, and each command individually is more powerful, and the
combination of all of them more powerful again. Furthermore, the on-line
help facilities have been much improved - now, typing a command with a
question mark will provide you with a template as before; however, you can
then type another question mark and get a more detailed description of
what that command does:
1> Type ?
FROMA,,,,,,,,,,TOK,OPTK: ?
Type [upto 10 files] To outfile OPT <H(ex) N(umbers)>
FROMA,,,,,,,,,,TOK,OPTK:
Similarly, when you make a mistake inputting a command, you'll receive
more informative messages, for example, typing the following under
Amigados:
1> Echo "Hello World!
Bad Args to Echo
You get a not too helpful message. The same action using
the ARP echo would cause:
1> Echo "Hello World!
Bad Args: Unmatched quotes
This is rather more helpful.
ESCAPE CODES
Another area of improvement is in ESCAPE CODES, which allow you
to send special information, such as colours, form feeds, carriage returns
and so forth to other devices, such as the printer or screen. The new
ARP escape codes contain the original DOS escape codes as a subset.
Check the ARP documentation for details of these codes. As an example,
1> Filenote "Filename" "\X9B7mReverse Print Comment\X9B0m"
makes the Filenote to LIST in reverse print when displayed, making it
stand out nicely.
WILDCARDS (quoted from ARP Chapter 1)
ARP has an extensive set of wildcards, and most ARP
programs allow them to be used. ARP supports ALL of the
AmigaDOS set of wildcards, as well as the more standard
Unix* style of wildcards. ARP supports the following
wildcard characters, note that these are valid inside or
out of quotes:
(a|b|c) Will match one of a, b or c.
These can be patterns.
? Matches any single character
#<pat> Pattern repeated 0 or more times,
in particular, #? matches anything.
[char] A set of characters, for example,
[abc] or [a..c] specify the same set.
[^char] Match everything but this set of characters.
* 0 or more occurances of any character.
These can be used in combination, of course, so that
*.(c|h) or *.[ch] will match any filenames ending in
either .c or .h preceeded by any number of characters,
including no characters.
In addition, ARP allows wildcards to be used at
multiple levels of a directory hierarchy. For example, if
you want to type all the files in all the directories of
your INCLUDE directory, you could use
1> Type DF0:Include/*/*
Which will take care of things nicely. You can be more
selective, for example only typing files that start with T
in directories that start with E:
1> Type DF0:Include/E*/T*
COMMAND ENHANCEMENTS
Here's a short description of the main enhancements contained
in the ARP commands, apart from the general overall enhancements as
listed above:
Assign - now capable of up to 10 assignments in a single command
ChangeTaskPri - checks the value of the current priority
- allows you to change the priority of the
currently running task
Delete - now interactive, ie you can decide whether or not to
delete those commands that you've selected by naming
them or by using wildcards
Echo - no quotes are required, and the command provides a simple
way of sending escape codes to, say, your printer
Info - now shows Formatted capacity of the disks, rather than
full unformatted capacity, thus more useful, since the
formatted capacity of a disk is about 837K, not 880K.
Incidentally, the current version of ARP INFO has a bug
which screws up the reading for hard disks with greater
than 30Meg capacity.
Prompt - recognises two new arguments, %N and %P, which allow
you to incorporate both the task number and the full
directory path as your prompt
Protect - Wildcards are now useable
Skip - using a question mark after Skip in a batch file allows
the user to give a label to jump to
Sort - much more flexible than the original
Type - allows multiple commands and wildcards, making it a much
more powerful command (and eliminating the need for JOIN)
MakeDir - now capable of creating up to 10 directories
In short, ARP is a very worthwhile and useful addition to the
great array of tools now available on the Amiga, and will provide a
number of secondary benefits too - the commands will take up less space
on your disks and run faster; there will be better software reliability
as programmers begin to write their programs with ARP in mind (there is
a full set of instructions for programmers' use); and your use of the
Amiga will be that much more efficient and productive. Many thanks to
the creators!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ END OF ABOUTARP ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~