PC Media 15

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ PC Media 15 / PC MEDIA CD15.iso / helpline / get27 / get27new.doc < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1987-11-26 | 28.3 KB | 616 lines

GET27NEW.DOC - New features in GET.EXE 2.7 - Copyright 1995 Bob Stephan This file summarizes the new and improved features in GET.EXE Version 2.7. If you have been using an older version of GET, read this file to find out what has been changed, and what has been added. Some of the more interesting new features described below are: * Test for write protected diskettes (GET K, Q, and L). * Support for International Dates and Times (GET H and F). * Other new date formats that can be used to compare file dates or create unique file names (GET F). * Read and create lower case Environment variable names (&var), * Sound Bytes: play tones on the speaker (/S). * File full path or "True Name" reporting (GET FP). * New logical math functions (GET R). * Locate the boot drive (GET Y). * Read variables from the master Environment (GET Z). * Create Environment variable strings up to 255 bytes long (GET S and Z). * Improved reporting of information on network drives (GET K, Q, and L). Pricing, licensing, and copyright. --------------------------------------------------------------- GET 2.7 is released as shareware with a requested registration fee of $15 plus $2 shipping and handling to U.S.A, Canada, or Mexico, or $4 to other countries. Registered users of any previous version of GET can upgrade to registered version 2.7 for $6 plus S&H regardless of the number of copies authorized on a previous site license. All previous individual, site, and distribution licenses remain in effect. If you need to increase the number of copies for which you are licensed please contact us for incremental pricing information. Note that Version 2.5 was the last version that was released as free for non-commercial use. Registered users of any version of GET may use Version 2.7 shareware version for an unlimited time without upgrading if they so prefer. The new version of GET.EXE is temporarily named GET27.EXE to preclude inadvertent overwriting of previous versions. When you are ready to switch over to version 2.7, rename GET27.EXE to GET.EXE and place it in your utility directory on your path. The full manual which is now commercially produced can be included with new registrations or ordered later by registered users for $8. An additional $2 S&H is required for each manual. (Postage is getting more expensive). These prices are subject to change. See ORDER.GET for additional pricing information. The shareware version of GET will display the copyright notice the first time it is invoked and periodically after that as it is used. GET checks the Environment block to determine whether it has been run prior to the current call. The g$$= variable (notice the lower case g) is created by GET to keep track of the number of times GET has been called for the purpose of displaying the copyright notice. The registered runtime version never displays the copyright notice except when it is called with no valid arguments. The runtime version for registered users is under 6K in size. See additional information below about the runtime version. NEW AND MODIFIED FEATURES. --------------------------------------------------------------- One completely new function (see GET FP below) has been added, and several of the existing functions have been enhanced to provide many new features as described below. Help screens have been updated and enhanced. To see the help screens issue the GET command at a DOS prompt with no arguments. The GET command information below is arranged alphabetically according to the GET command character. But first, a discussion of new and changed switches and a few miscellaneous items. A problem was discovered in Version 2.62 which was released but rapidly withdrawn. It reported incorrect file size information in the ErrorLevel. Version 2.63 was released to fix the problem, but there may be some copies of 2.62 in circulation. Replace any copies of 2.62 with either 2.63 or this release. This does not apply to version 2.61 or earlier. No new features were added in 2.62 or 2.63. SWITCHES, PARAMETERS, AND OTHER NOTABLE NEW FEATURES ----------------------------------------------------------------- GET Z "&var" Using "&var" in the "prompt" argument for GET Z, where 'var' is the name of an Environment variable, will read the named variable value directly from the environment without using DOS to substitute the value for the name. When read this way the variable name is case sensitive so must be entered exactly as desired. See additional information on the use of this feature under GET Z below. /V&var Create mixed case Environment variable names. When you use the /V switch to create a variable name, if the first character is an ampersand (&) the name will not be converted to uppercase. If you have any lowercase characters in the name, they will remain lowercase, thus you can use all lowercase or even mixed case. With the above GET Z "&var" feature, you will be able to read these variables, but they will not be available to most other DOS programs. Whether creating or reading a variable with &var, the & is not taken to be part of the name; however, any additional embedded &'s will be used as part of the name. INPUT BUFFER SIZE INCREASED The input buffer for GET S[E] and GET Z[E] is increased to 255 characters. This allows longer strings to be input, especially for GET Z and GET ZE where the input might be from redirection or from an Environment variable. The max length of the BATch command line, including substitution of Environment variables is still limited by DOS to 128 characters - can't change that. See additional information on this feature under GET Z below. INTERNATIONAL DATES AND TIMES SUPPORTED The date and time functions in GET (H and F) will now report the dates and times in the format specified by the country code that is currently in use. (See additional information under GET H below.) SOUND BYTES with the /Sn switch. Additional sound control features added for use with the /Sn switch. As before /S or /S0 will turn off error beeps. /S1 (the default) is normal beeping using the ASCII 7 BEL character. Now n can also take on values from 2 through 255 to produce various combinations of sounds. This is best explained using hexadecimal input as /S$xy where x and y can each be from 0 through A (but must represent a number greater than decimal 1). Each hex digit (1-F) will produce a tone approximately 1/2 second long. The larger the digit, the lower the tone. A digit of 0 will produce no tone, thus all combinations except /S$0, /S$00, /S$1, and /S$01 are valid (i.e., /S$2 or /S$02 through /S$FF are valid). Experiment to find the ones that are pleasing to your ear. The GET EC (ECho) command will take the /Sn switch and unconditionally echo the specified tones with or without a "prompt" specified. All other commands that can produce beeps do so in response to an error condition or a timeout. GET C[E] and GET S[E] GET user input --------------------------------------------------------------- /K is a new switch to activate a countdown during the last 10 seconds of waiting time for /Wnum. GET C[E] and GET S[E] with the /Wn and /K switches for a waiting time will count the last 10 seconds as 9, 8, ..., 0. This gives a 10 second warning that the waiting time is about to expire If an invalid key is pressed during the waiting time, a splat, '*', (asterisk) will be displayed which will remain until a valid key is pressed. GET SE will now echo dots (...) instead of no echo at all. The input buffer for GET S[E] and GET Z[E] is increased to 255 characters. This allows longer strings to be input, especially for GET Z and GET ZE where the input might be from redirection or from an Environment variable. The max length of the BATch command line, including substitution of Environment variables is still limited by DOS to 128 characters - can't change that. GET S /C now also disables the Esc key as well as Ctrl-C/Break, but only if the /X switch is not included. With /X the Esc key exit can easily be detected and appropriate action taken so disabling does not seem necessary. The old /~ switch for GET S has been completely eliminated. Additional sound control features added for use with the /Sn switch. See the description of the /S switch above. GET E GET Environment information --------------------------------------------------------------- GET E was reporting 1 too many bytes of Environment free. This has been corrected. GET EC ECho --------------------------------------------------------------- GET EC will take the /Sn switch described above and unconditionally echo the specified tones with or without a "prompt" specified. All other commands that can produce beeps do so in response to an error condition or a timeout. GET H and F Dates and times ---------------------------------------------------------------- The date and time functions in GET (H and F) will now report the dates and times in the format specified by the country code that is currently in use. As an adjunct to this change, GET HE now reports the country code in the ErrorLevel. Previously GET HE reported the length of the date/time string which probably was of no use for any application. If the country code is greater than 254, the ErrorLevel will be maxed out at 255. This would affect Portugal, Finland, Israel, and some Arabic language countries. Note that country codes are usually the international telephone prefix. GET H[E] 2-digit year Code 512 has been added as an option for GET H[E]. If 512 is added to the coded numerical argument, the year will be placed in the Environment as the rightmost 2 digits only. 512 can either replace 8 or it can be added to 8. Either value will produce the 2-digit year. NOTE: Since the previous version it has been possible to obtain a 2-digit year by adding /R to GET H, but there was no easy way to do it with GET HE. GET HE/FE Date format override. The date format will default to the format for the country specified in DOS. You can override the format with the /Sn switch where n can be 0, 1, or 2 as follows: 0 USA format Month-Day-Year 1 Europe format Day-Month-Year 2 Japan format Year-Month-Day The date separator will retain the value for the country specified for the operating system, but the order of the values will change according to these format codes. Note that the Japan format with a 2-digit year would be ideal for naming files because they would sort properly in date order. Use GET HE 518 /s2/a. However, countries that use a '/' or '.' character for a separator cannot use it in a filename. Therefore another date format feature has also been added. You can eliminate the separators completely by adding 4 to the date format code with /Sn. Thus n can also be 4, 5, or 6 to suppress the separators and the previous command would be GET HE 518 /S6. As the year 2000 rolls around you might want to use a 4 digit year for proper sorting. Then the command would be GET HE 14 /S6. The /A is not necessary with values of 4, 5, or 6 because leading 0's will automatically be included. For example, you can create an 8 character filename incorporating the date with a command such as GET HE "XX" 518 /S6 where XX can be any two leading characters you want. /S6 puts the two-digit year first to facilitate sorting, and it also eliminates the delimiters as well as including leading 0's. COMPRESSED DATES with the /C switch (think C for Compressed) GET H and GET F /E report dates in compressed form with /C. These dates can be used directly to compare the dates between two files or to compare a file date with today's date. This date format does not have much visual usefulness because it is not directly readable as a date. It can be used to generate unique file names but the names will not be meaningful to view. To report these dates use the /C switch with either GET H /C or GET F filespec /E/C. Other date or file parameters will be ignored but you can use some of the global switches such as /H to report the output in hexadecimal. The date format is independent of the Country setting and the /S switch, as well as any coded date parameter. These are ignored and the date is reported as follows. The /C switch also overrides the Extended functions of GET HE and GET FE/E. The format used is the DOS native internal file date format. It uses 16 bits as follows: BITs fedcba9 8765 43210 Value Year Month Day The year is relative to 1980; e.g., 1995 is 15. Thus to convert to meaningful numbers it is necessary to first convert to binary format then extract the bit fields manually and convert to numbers. The only meaningful date arithmetic that can be done with these numbers is to find the number of days difference but ONLY if both numbers are within the same month. Examples: 1. Compare two file dates. GET F file1 /C/E/VF1= GET F file2 /C/E/VF2= GET R "=" %F1% /W%F2% Note that GET R returns the values 0 if F1<F2 1 if F1=F2 2 if F1>F2 2. Compare a file date with today's date. GET H /C /VTODAY= GET F file /C/E/VFDATE= GET R "=" %FDATE% /W%TODAY% Remember that the GET HE 14 function can be used to save today's date, then you can set the system date with the DOS DATE command, and finally you can reset it from the saved date. That provides the capability to compare a file date with any selected date. 3. Find how many days older than today the file is. The first check is to see if they are in the same month, assuming that the same month is in the current year. GET H 4 /VTODAY= GET F %1 /E/W4/VFDATE= if "%TODAY%"=="%FDATE%" goto COMPARE ECHO The months do not compare goto QUIT :COMPARE GET H /C /VTODAY= GET F %1 /C/E/VFDATE= GET R "-" %TODAY% /W%FDATE% Echo The file is %GET% days old :QUIT GET F[E] /E GET File Date ---------------------------------------------------------------- See information above under GET H for new date/time formats. GET FE filespec /E/Wnum can now include seconds (code 64). GET FP This is a NEW function GET Full Path ---------------------------------------------------------------- GET FP returns same information as MS-DOS 5.0's TRUENAME command. (GET FP requires DOS 3.0 or later). Syntax: GET FP filespec For a given filespec GET FP returns the full path leading to that file. Letters are converted to uppercase, and forward slashes are converted to backslashes; however, if you use forward slashes you must enclose the filespec in single quotes (e.g. 'filespec'). The ErrorLevel is the subdirectory level similar to GET Y. Note that the filespec does not have to exist and this is not a test for existence of a given file. The full path that is returned will be the one to the filespec as if it did exist. If a test for existence is required, GET F can be applied to the result of GET FP, or you can use the DOS IF EXIST subcommand. If the filespec given is the name of a directory, it must end in a backslash (\). Examples: GET FP C:\DOS\ or GET FP \DOS\. If no filespec is given, the current directory on the logged drive will be returned. If just a drive specification is given, the colon (:) is required and the current directory on that drive will be returned. If the given path string is on a JOINed drive, the returned name is the one that would be needed if the drive were not JOINed. Similarly for a SUBSTed, ASSIGNed, or network drive letter. The full path on a local drive always starts with the drive letter (d:), those on network drives always start with \\. EXAMPLES: 1. Use GET FP to get the full path for a file named TEST.EXE. subst d: c:\util\test GET FP d:\test.exe And the result is C:\UTIL\TEST\TEST.EXE 2. Find the current directory on a drive other than the logged drive. (The colon is required). GET FP e: And the result is (if the current directory on E: is \CURRENT). E:\CURRENT 3. Find the parent directory of the current directory on drive E: GET FP E:.. And the result is (if the current directory on E: is \CURRENT). E:\ Note that the parent directory of the root directory does not exist so such a result would be no Environment variable and an ErrorLevel of 0. GET FP requires MS-DOS or PC-DOS 3.0 or above, DR DOS or Novell DOS 6.0 or above, or OS/2 version 2.0 or above. It may not be able to determine the true name if you use "nested" JOIN or SUBST commands, or on a network which does not report true names properly. GET K, Q, and L GET Disk information ---------------------------------------------------------------- GET K, Q, and L /A switch These functions test for a readable diskette in the drive if used for drives A: and B:. Two methods of testing are available-- a standard DOS method, and one that is used in an OS/2 VDM. The DOS method is faster in DOS but slower and less reliable under OS/2. If the default DOS method does not give the desired results for something you want to do, you can try the /A (for Alternate method) switch to force GET to use the same method that is used under OS/2. This is the method used by older versions of GET such as 2.5, and it can be very slow if there is an unformatted diskette in the drive. Remember, the two methods return different error codes as described in the manual. When used on drives other than A: and B: in previous versions of GET, this test often failed due to technical reasons even if valid media was in place, and it interfered with obtaining the size or label of some drives such as removable and network drives. GET K, Q, and L /X switch A /X switch has been added to check for a writeable disk in drive A: or B:. First GET checks for a formatted disk in the usual manner of GET Q, K, and L. If this test fails, the ErrorLevel will be 0 and the return code in the Environment. If this test passes, then an attempt is made to write to the disk, but no data will actually be written. If the disk is write protected an ErrorLevel of 0 and an Environment variable (error code) of 3 will be reported. If the status cannot be determined, an ErrorLevel and Environment variable of 0 are reported. If these tests are passed, then the normal return from GET K, Q, or L will be reported. The read and write tests will always be bypassed if the drive is other than A: or B:. This may be inconvenient for those rare users who have a 3rd floppy drive other than A: or B:, but it should be usable in 99.44% of the cases. It also does not test other types of drives with removable media such as Bernoulli drives. The benefit of this restriction is that it permits obtaining size and label information on more types of drives including possibly some network drives. This benefit is thought to more than compensate for the occasional Abort, Retry, Ignore type message on the odd removable drive other than A: or B:. GET P[E] GET Printer information --------------------------------------------------------------- GET P[E] now takes an optional prompt. Thus you can announce to the user what is happening without a separate Echo; e.g. GET PE "Initializing the printer" The usual ECho switches /N and /A can be used. GET Q[E] GET Disk Size --------------------------------------------------------------- See the information under GET K above. GET R 'Rithmetic --------------------------------------------------------------- Additional logical math functions added to GET R: & Bitwise logical AND Syntax: GET R "&" num1 /wnum2 Result: num1 AND num2 # Bitwise logical OR Syntax: GET R "#" num1 /wnum2 Result: num1 OR num2 ^ Bitwise logical XOR Syntax: GET R "^" num1 /wnum2 Result: num1 XOR num2 ~ Bitwise logical NOT Syntax: GET R "~" num1 Result: NOT num1 GET S[E] GET String --------------------------------------------------------------- See the information under GET C above. GET Y[E] Drive/Directory information --------------------------------------------------------------- BOOT DRIVE: The /X switch with GET YE reports the Boot drive using the same codes and format as GET YE. This feature may require DOS 4.0 or later. GET Z[E] Zap --------------------------------------------------------------- The input buffer for GET S[E] and GET Z[E] is increased to 255 characters. This allows longer strings to be input, especially for GET Z and GET ZE where the input might be from redirection or from an Environment variable. The max length of the BATch command line, including substitution of Environment variables is still limited by DOS to 128 characters - can't change that. With GET you can, for example, put a PATH longer than 128 characters into the Environment. While it is not recommended, it is possible. One way to do it with GET is to put your desired long PATH into a one-line text file ending in a carriage return, then read it in with GET. For example, if your long PATH is in the file LONGPATH.TXT you can use GET ZE /VPATH= <LONGPATH.TXT >NUL By redirecting the output with >NUL you suppress the echo that is produced by DOS when reading the file. GET Z "&VAR" This is an intriguing addition to GET which may have some interesting applications. Consider the following BATch file: for %%a in (1 2 3) do set var%%a=%%a for %%a in (1 2 3) do echo %VAR%%a% In general the echo in the second line will not echo the contents of VAR1, VAR2, and VAR3 because DOS does not recursively parse such a statement. I.e. after DOS substitutes for %%a to get %VAR1%, it does not again parse the line to get the value of VAR1. We could try several different variations of this theme, including calling a subroutine BATch file, but in general DOS will not parse the lines in the way that we would like it to. Note that we can write it so that 4DOS will parse it correctly, and by a convoluted method DOS can be tricked into doing it, but it requires echoing statements out to a temporary BATch file, and executing the temporary file. However, now we can do it more easily with GET. The new feature permits GET to read variables directly from the Environment, given the variable name. The above statements can then be written as follows to achieve the desired result: for %%a in (1 2 3) do set var%%a=%%a for %%a in (1 2 3) do call echoget %%a ECHOGET.BAT as called is: get z "&VAR%1" Echo %GET% Note the ampersand in GET Z "&VAR%1". New for GET Z is if the first character of the string is an '&', the remainder of the string will be interpreted as the name of an Environment variable to be read into GET's Environment variable - either GET or /Vvar=. As seen in the example this permits a pseudo indexing of variables; e.g. VAR1, VAR2, VAR3, etc. The value of each can be set into the GET variable to be operated on by generic BATch statements. The GET R function could be used to increment the index, for example. Suppose you want to operate on a list of files. The file names could be loaded into the environment by SETting FILE1=filename1, FILE2=filename2, etc. These names can be extracted by GET Z "&VAR", maybe something like this: @Echo off Rem Create a temporary auxiliary file: Echo GET R %%N%% /W1 /VN= >LISTFILE.BAT Echo GET Z "%%1" /VFILE%%N%%=>>LISTFILE.BAT set N=0 Rem The next line puts the names of all the BAT files Rem into the Environment as FILE1, FILE2, etc. For %%a in (*.bat) do call listfile %%a del listfile.bat set J=0 Rem Now for DEMO purposes, list out the file names. Rem They could just as easily be operated on in some way. :LOOP GET R %J% /W1 /VJ= GET Z "&FILE%J%" Echo File %J% is %GET% set FILE%J%= IF NOT "%J%"=="%N%" GOTO LOOP set N= set J= set GET= Another advantage of this enhancement is that long variable values can be transferred, which might otherwise cause the BATch command line to be longer than 128 bytes if DOS does the substitution; for example a long PATH string. The usual skip arg and /Wmax switch can then be used to operate on these longer strings. To accommodate longer strings, the input buffer has been expanded to 255 characters. When the /M (for Master Environment) switch is used with GET Z "&var", GET will look for the variable in the Master Environment, and if the string is found will store it in the local Environment (which may be the same if there is no secondary command processor, of course.) This is a different use of the /M switch from other commands, and it provides a means to retrieve a string which was stored in the master environment. Finally, the &var feature is case sensitive. Most Environment variable names are in upper case. A notable exception is the 'windir' variable that Microsoft Windows places in the Environment of DOS sessions. GET Z "&windir" will retrieve this variable if it is needed for some reason; however, this means the BATch programmer must take care to put other BATch Environment variable names in upper case for the &VAR feature. RUNTIME Version for Registered users --------------------------------------------------------------- The registered runtime version never displays the copyright notice except when it is called with no valid arguments. The runtime version for registered users is under 6K in size. For the convenience of registered users who are developing BATch files, and want to use the runtime module for development to avoid the periodic display of the copyright notice, the GET?=ON feature has been added to the runtime module. With GET?=ON either GET module will report the values that it places in the Environment and the ErrorLevel for debugging purposes. If you do use the runtime module as suggested, yet you like to have the help screens from the shareware module available for use, I suggest using one of the following methods: (a) Use redirection to capture the help screens to a file and use a text editor or file viewer to read the file. It is very useful to load this file into a window in your text editor when you are editing BATch files for quick reference. (b) For convenience, GET27.HLP which is a copy of the help screens has been included which can be used as above. (c) Keep GET27.EXE in your path and run it when you want to view the help screens. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome. Contact us at: MOBY DISK: 1021 San Carlos Road, Pebble Beach, CA 93953 Phone: (408) 646-1899 COMPUSERVE:72357,2276 America Online: MobyDisk2 Internet: bob.stephan@nitelog.com BBS: Nitelog 408-655-1096 BBS: The Cricket 408-373-3773 /s/ Bob Stephan May 21, 1995