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LOOKFOR.DOC
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1988-09-26
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TITLE OF PROGRAM: LOOKFOR.COM (version 2.8).
UTILITY: Search text files for words and phrases that may be
connected with AND and OR relationships. Display pertinent areas of
text in easily readable format.
MACHINE REQUIREMENTS: PC, XT, AT, PS/2 running under DOS 2.0+.
DESCRIPTION: Enter a search query consisting of multiple words or
phrases. ORs and ANDs are treated as logical relations and are not
searched for as words themselves unless they start or end a query.
They may be replaced by the marks "/" and "+", respectively which
likewise have only logical significance when embedded in a query.
Parentheses have no logical effect.
The wildcard character "*" may be used as a prefix for the first
word of any search term i.e. "*comput or *process" will find the
occurrences of "microcomputer, minicomputer, compute, computer,
computations, microprocessor, multiprocessor, processing", etc.
Ending a search term with a surplus " " (space) will require that
the term end at that point in the text with a nulled character
(i.e. space, control code, punctuation, etc). Thus, "*a" will
find all words containing the letter "a" or "A" whereas "*a "
will find only the words ending in "a" or "A".
The search query may be entered on the command line at the system
prompt. That is, "LOOKFOR this or that and the other thing".
Files of nearly unlimited size may be searched, or, if no search
query is entered, files may be viewed from their beginnings.
.COM, .EXE, and .ARC files are not searched. When answering the
prompt to enter a filename to search, the default drive and
directory may be changed by entering commands in standard DOS
format. Pathnames and the wildcards "*" and "?" may be used with
the filenames. Thus, all files in a directory may be
sequentially searched with pauses for viewing the files with
"hits". Searching resumes when the "+" key is pressed.
A directory of files may be obtained using the ordinary DOS
syntax at the filename input prompt. The program returns to the
prompt upon return from the directory showing.
When viewing text, scrolling and paging are permitted. The words
searched for are highlighted. Highlighting may be turned off and
on by pressing the <-> key. Unshifted <PrtSc> may be used to
obtain a printout with the top and bottom screen data omitted.
The words searched for are highlighted. Highlighting may be
turned off and on by pressing the <-> key.
LOOKFOR's character set is the same as that of the host computer
except all spaces, punctuation, control codes, and some non-
alphabetic graphics codes are nulled out and ignored. Also, all
lower case letters are translated to upper case to prevent
case-sensitivity in the search. If a literal search must be
made, the translation table can be changed to restore nulled or
altered characters, but for general use this is extremely
inefficient. The control codes ASCII 0 to 32 (including the
space) are permanently nulled and may not be searched for. The
translation table is pre-configured based on IBM's Multilingual
character code page 850.
Press <F1> at the prompt to view and modify the translation
table. Letters with diacritic marks should be translated to
upper case following the instructions presented. If the
appropriate language keyboard is not installed, depress the ALT
key while entering a character's decimal code on the numeric
keypad.
Included with the table configuration procedure is the option of
displaying or not displaying graphics characters (codes 128-255).
Some word processors use certain graphics characters for control
codes, and it is desirable to not display them. Also, the range
of text within which the ANDed expressions must occur is
adjustable from the setup menu.
When the table is modified, the changes may be used and
optionally rewritten into LOOKFOR.COM. Do not rename this
program. Also, be sure another LOOKFOR.COM does not exist in the
current directory or it will be altered in a rewriting attempt.
The choice on the graphics display option and the AND range will
be saved with the translation table if the save option is
selected. Otherwise, the changes will be in effect only until
the program is terminated.
The <ESC> key may be used to escape any of LOOKFOR's program
functions.
If you cannot get highlighting with LOOKFOR when using a
monochrome display, the common reason is that your screen at the
system level does not have the standard monochrome attribute
(07h or 70h). This can happen if a PROMPT command specifies
color or if a previous program leaves a color attribute on exit.
Correct the prompt command and do a CLS before running LOOKFOR.
AUTHOR: David L. Trafton, 6309 Stoneham Rd, Bethesda, Md. 20817.
Copyright 1988. Free distribution is permitted. If LOOKFOR is
adopted for use, the price per individual user is $10 to the
author.