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1990-08-20
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ZAP - by Ken Stillson April 1990 Updated for version 3.3
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
-=- ZAP IS NOT "FREEWARE" - PLEASE READ THE FILE LICENSE.DOC -=-
-=- IF YOU DECIDE TO USE ZAP ON YOUR COMPUTER(S). -=-
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
What is ZAP ?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> In General
Zap is one of the growing number of utilities that does a
little too much to generalize its function completely. As well as
it's basic functions, ZAP has a lot of short cuts for doing all
sorts of common operations. It is intended to be useful enough to
be a replacement for the COMMAND.COM user interface.
> The Menus
On the right hand side of the screen is a menu box. There are
three different boxes needed to list all the ZAP functions, and two
for the current values of all the F4 macros. Press the space bar
to rotate though the menus, or alt-x to jump to menu number x.
> The Beginning
It's original concept and basic format were taken from the
program "Directory Control" [DC.COM]. The author very much thanks
the original author of DC, and congratulates him/her on their
excellent program. Alas, the author of ZAP has been unable to
determine the identity of the author of DC because the
documentation for DC was not included on the BBS copy of DC the
author obtained. PLEASE - do not remove authors credit for their
hard work by removing necessary documentation from programs - it's
just not fair !
> Moving Around the Directory Tree
ZAP displays the current directory, one file per line, giving
basic information about the files. If the list is longer than one
screen, the cursor keys (include page-up and page-down) can be used
to look around the list.
You can change the way the list is sorted. Hold down Ctrl and
press N for Name, E for extension, S for size, D for date, or O for
original (no sort). Sub-directories are sorted separately, and
put at the beginning, always sorted by their name. Ctrl-R will
set the Reverse sort mode, which is a saved default (see "setting
defaults" below).
ZAP allows you to easily change the current directory. Use the
cursor keys to move the high-light bar onto the name of a directory
you want to change to, and press return. The ".." selection will
go to the parent of the current directory, the "." key will simply
reload the current one and re-draw the screen. You can short-cut
to the previous directory by pressing ".", and short-cut to the
root directory of the current drive by pressing "/" or "\".
You can also jump directly to an entry (without using the
cursor keys), by pressing the first letter of the name of the
entry. Then press return to select that directory. To short-cut
pressing return, hold down shift as you press the letter.
To type in a full directory name to change to, press F9.
This also allows you to change the current drive. Playing with
this a little will demonstrate: ZAP lets you move around a very
large directory tree very quickly and very easily.
> Basic File Operations
ZAP also allows file operations. Pressing return when
high-lighting a file rather than a directory will run a command
upon the highlighted file. The idea is this:
RETURN- views the file
shift-RETURN- edits the file
ctrl-RETURN- runs the file
For the view and edit functions- you must select your own
favorite programs to do the operation. You may wish to use the DOS
"type" and "edlin" programs. See below in the "Setting Defaults"
section for how to change the programs used.
The first four function keys also provide file operations.
F1 - copy file
F2 - delete file
F3 - move / rename file
F4 - do ANYTHING to the file
F4 is one of the very special (unique?) features of ZAP.
The whole idea of these functions is that they work on either a
single file (the highlighted one), or on a set of files (the marked
or memorized files). F1-3 are obvious normal functions. Note that
the delete and move operations are very fast.
F4 works like this: You enter any DOS command using a "@"
character instead of an individual filename. ZAP will sequentially
replace the @ by each file that is selected.
For example, let's say you have a set of files that you would
like to have sorted. You have a program called SORT which takes
its first parameter as the source file and its second parameter as
the destination file. Now all you have to do to sort all these
files is mark the ones you wish sorted (see below for how to mark
files), press F4 and type the command:
SORT @ _@
What does this do? ZAP will replace both "@"'s with the first file
that is marked, thus from that file to a file which has the same
name, but with a "_" as the first character. This is because many
such programs will not allow the source and destination files to
have the exact same name. After executing this command, ZAP will
do it again with the second marked file, and so on.
Note that by use of the ";" to separate commands, you can
execute multiple commands on each file. So if you wanted to have
the destination names match the original ones, you might use:
SORT @ temp; del @; ren temp @
This will sort to the file named temp, remove the unsorted
file, and rename the temp file to the original's name. Again it
will be executed sequentially for each marked file.
> File Marking Procedures and Short-Cuts
The most basic way to mark files is with the + key or right
arrow key. To unmark files, use the - or left arrow key. As
usual, the first letter can be used to jump to a filename quickly
to mark or unmark it. The following function keys also help out in
marking files:
F5 - clear all marks
F6 - mark all files
F7 - toggle all marks (reverse marked and unmarked files)
shift-F5 - clear all marks below highlighted file
shift-F6 - mark all files below highlighted file
shift-F7 - toggle all marks below highlighted file
> The "Memorized Files"
Here are just a few of some uses of ZAP's ability to memorize a
list of files:
- Each time a command is executed, ZAP loses its list of marks.
Obviously, if you want to process a list more than once, this would
be terrible. ZAP offers several alternatives to saving a list in
memory or on disk.
- Marks can only mark the files in the current directory. However,
sometimes you want to operate on files in more than one directory
in a single process. By appending marked file's pathnames to the
memorized list, you can effectively ZAP files in more than one
directory.
The ZAP memory list allows up to 99 files to "memorized." You
can perform an F4-type function on the entire memorized list
instead of on the current directory's marks. To do this, just use