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Text File | 1991-09-09 | 19KB | 364 lines

WFILE 1.10 WorkFILE - process ASCII-files Amiga Version (C) 1991 Joerg Fenin / Metalworx ------------------------------------------------------------ WFile is Freeware. That means it can be used and distributed freely as long as the following rules are obeyed: * WFile may not be part of a commercial product without the written permission of the author. * WFile may not be distributed on (public domain-, shareware-, freeware-) disks if more than DM 5,- / US $ 5,- is charged as copying and/or distribution fee for that disk. (exception: Fred Fish, he may charge more). * The copyright message must remain UNCHANGED! * WFile MUST NEVER be distributed on own disk series of Stefan Ossowski PD-Versand, Rainer Wolf PD-Versand, Markt & Technik AG, Karstadt AG. USE THIS PROGRAM AT YOUR OWN RISK!! There is no guarantee that WFile works properly. The author takes no responsibility for any damage that might result from the use of WFile. ------------------------------------------------------------ 1 Purpose Do you often interchange ASCII files between the Amgia, a PC or UNIX systems ? Do you look for a possibility to expand TABs in ASCII files to SPACES or vice versa ? Do you want to extinguish certain characters from ASCII files ? If the answers were YES, you may have some advantages in using WFile, if the answers were NO, you can leave here and try out some other program on this disk. WFile should make it easy for you to interchange ASCII files between different computer systems (such as Amiga, PC or UNIX systems). It does all character converting (foreign symbols etc) and NEWLINE conversion for you. WFile can also be used to expand TAB-codes (0x09) into any number (2 - 8 usually) of SPACE-codes (0x20) or vice versa, or you can delete certain characters from your ASCII files (such as formfeeds (0x0c) for example). WFile stands for 'work file', that means do specific things on (ASCII) files. 2 Capabilities WFile can do the following things for you: * Expand TABs to multiple spaces * Shrink multiple spaces to one TAB * Change foreign symbols to different (machines') character sets * Add or strip carriage return codes (0x0d) from the end of each line * Online help screens * Built-in templates for easy file interchange between Amiga, PC and UNIX * Profiles for default settings. 3 Usage WFile has no (actually not yet) intuition interface, it has to be invoked from a CLI or shell. If you simply type wfile you will get the following template: wfile 1.11/6 - 12-Aug-91 (C) 1991 Metalworx Usage:wfile < file| -? > [<+|->CR] [<+|->T[size]] [-ddd=ddd [...] [-0]] [-b] [-f[file]] [-AI] [-IA] [-AU] [-UA] [-UI] [-IU] [+ddd] Parameters in <>-brackets must be specfied, those in []-brackets are optional. If a | (straight slash) stands between parameters exactly ONE of these parameters has to be specified. Example: [<+|->CR] ||||||| | ||||||| |--------------- end of optional parameter ||||||| ||||||------------------ command, see below |||||| |||||------------------- end of unconditional parameter ||||| ||||-------------------- command introduction #2 |||| |||--------------------- command introduction seperator, use ||| either command introduction #1 (+) or ||| command introduction #2 (-) ||| ||---------------------- command introduction #1 || |----------------------- beginning of unconditional parameter | ------------------------ beginning of optional parameter or literally: If you decide to use command CR, which is just up to you, then you have to give either +CR or -CR, not just CR and not +-CR. WFile needs at least one argument, the name of the file that is to be processed. If you don't specify anything else, WFile just reads the file, creates a backup file of it (by appending .bak to the filename, see below) and writes the file back to disk unchanged. 3.1 Commands -? invokes builtin help function. Therefore on Amiga systems the file wfile.hlp has to be located in the same directory as wfile. On other systems (MSDOS and UNIX) it has to exist in the current directory. The Amiga version automatically calculates the number of lines for each page from the current, active window. After displaying this amount of lines, WFile waits for the RETURN key to be pressed. On other systems this line count is static and may be changed in the file wfile.h If you are familiar in using WFile you can delete the help file. Of course you can't invoke the help fuction then! -|+CR strips or adds CR codes ($0d) to the end of each line. On Amiga and UNIX machines, the end of a text line is represented with a single newline character ($0a), on MSDOS based machines therefore two characters are needed ($0d$0a, carriage return (CR), linefeed). If you specify -CR all CR codes will be stripped off. Use this option if you convert text files from MSDOS to the Amiga or to UNIX. Use +CR to convert it the other way round. -|+T[tabsize] In some text editors, such as vi, MicroEmacs or the TurboC editor you can change the size of a tab. Usually a tab consists of eight spaces, but for a C programmer this value often is too big, if you use many ifs, fors and whiles. So most of the programmers set the tabsize to 2, which is a convenient value. The above editors then still use tabcodes but expand them within their own environment to just two spaces, no matter what the outside world say! If you then load up this file with a 'clever' editor, such as dme, tabs appear again as eight spaces. To convert files between 'clever' editors and 'dumb' ones (no offense, really, they got other advantages, at least I think so... :-) you can use this command. -T exchanges tabcodes against multiple spaces. You can enter the number of spaces by specifing the optional tabsize parameter right after the 'T', e.g. -T2, this will expand one tab code ($09) to two spaces ($20). If you don't specify the tabsize, WFILE assumes a value of eight. +T shrinks multiple spaces into one tab. The tabsize parameter serves as a maximum value. This is a bit complicated: If you say for example +T5 a tabstop will be set every fifth column in a file (column 0, 5, 10, 15...). This means, that at maximum 5 spaces will be converted into on tab, saving you 4 bytes. But it might be possible, that the first three columns are filled up with text: Column: 01234567890 /** Text | | | | | ----- following text | | | ------- two spaces | ---------- beginning of line In this and in similar cases just two spaces will be converted into one tabcode, setting the textcounter up to the next tabstop. In my language I would call this a fixed tab. As far as I know, all text editors and word processors use this system of handling tabs. However the source code is provided for those who wish to change this (but I wouldn't dare, this part of the code is very cryptic I must say!). -ddd=ddd change decimal values. With this powerful option you can change any character of your file into another. This gives you the possibilty of transfering files from one system to another without having to fix all the special characters (like the German Umlaute etc.) on the new system. We in Germany have a letter that is made of an o and an e together. We call this an "ö" (<- probably not displayed, if you use different keymaps). This letter has the ASCII value 246. On MSDOS systems it has the ASCII value 148. To convert all these letters automatically you just have to say -246=148. You can alse remove all these letters if you say -246=0. In this case all oes will be removed. If you would like to exchange the oe against a \0 you have to specify -0 as an additional option (see below). This tells WFile to treat the 0 as decimal value, not as a remove command. In this release you have to use decimal ASCII values. I plan to allow the use of hexadecimal and octal numbers. -0 treat 0 as an ASCII value As default the 0 will act like a remove command. If you say for example -246=0, each letter with the ASCII value 246 will be removed. If you say -246=0 -0, then all letters with ASCII value 246 will be exchanged by '\0' characters. I didn't use this myself, but may be there is a situation where it might be needed. -b do not create backup file. By default WFile creates a backup of the original file, just in case anything goes wrong. On Amiga and UNIX systems .bak will be appended to the filename, on MSDOS machines the file's extension will be changed to .bak. With -b you can suppress the creation of the backup file, for example if you don't have space on your disk. -f[filename] read profile with WFile commands. Yet another very powerful option. You can stack multiple commands in a file that may be processed when invoking WFile. This gives you the possibilty to create several profiles for different tasks, for example one profile to handle conversion between MSDOS and Amiga, another on to handle the opposite (though there are also bultin templates for these special cases, see below). If you don't specify a filename the file wfile.pro will be loaded, if it exists. See below for information on how to build a profile. -AI Amiga to IBM conversion template This template changes foreign symbols (German Umlaute in the current version) from the Amiga to the enhanced IBM-ASCII set used in IBM PCs and its clones. It also adds an CR code to the end of each line and removes the end-of-file character ($1a). -IA IBM to Amiga conversion template This templete changes foreign symbols (German Umlaute in the current version) from the enhanced IBM-ASCII set to MSDOS compatible systems to the character set of the Amiga. The CR code at the ende of each line will be stripped, an end-of-file character ($1a) will be appended to the file. -AU Amiga to UNIX conversion template changes Amiga foreign symbols to their UNIX (HP 9000/825 HP-UX 7.0 SysV) equivalents (see above). -UA UNIX to Amiga conversion template changes UNIX (HP 9000/825 HP-UX 7.0 SysV) foreign symbols to their Amiga equivalents (see above). -UI UNIX to IBM conversion template changes foreign symbols from UNIX to the enhanced IBM- ASCII set used in IBM PCs and its clones. It also adds an CR code to the end of each line. An end-of- file character ($1a) will be appended to the file. -IU IBM to UNIX conversion templete changes foreign symbols from the enhanced IBM-ASCII set on MSDOS compatible systems their equivalents in UNIX.The CR code at the end of each line will be stripped, the end-of-file-code will be deleted. +ddd append character at end of file. On MSDOS systems all files end with a special end-of- file character ($1a). UNIX and Amiga systems don't need these characters. To add such character you can specify +26 as an option and a character with the ASCII value 26 ($1a) will be appended at the end of the file 3.2 Templates WFile has currently six builtin templates (see above) for easy text interchange between Amiga, MSDOS and UNIX systems. Whenever you specify a template as an option to WFile, all its commands will be printed to SDTOUT, to let you see what is going on. 3.3 Profiles Generally: All options within a profile are written to STDOUT to let you see what's going on. In a profile you can specify the options that WFile should use. You can keep any number of profiles, according to your needs. If you want to use a profile you must specify the -f option (see above) to let WFile know your commands come from a file. If no filename after the -f option is specified, WFile looks for a file named 'wfile.pro' in the current directory to read from. A profile can contain any number of options as long as the general maximum for WFile commands is not exceeded. All templates (see above) may be used! You should not specify the options within a template also by yourself. WFile might get confused if an option has to be processed twice. Each option must stand in a single line. Each line MUST NOT contain more than 79 characters (currently there is no option, that is that long). Each line MUST end with a newline character ($0a on UNIX and Amiga, $0d$0a on MSDOS). Comment lines MUST have a # character as their first sign. Example: # don't enter the <newline> literally, just press return -t2 <newline> -UI <newline> -b <newline> 4 Technical information WFile was written in C and has been compiled, optimized for time and made resident with the SAS/Lattice C Compiler 5.10a. See the source readme file for information concerning the source code. It does not need any libraries, handlers or devices. Files are read in in one piece, usually the allocated space will be 2-3 times larger than the orignal file. This limits the file size of the worked file. In a future release I will include an option, that reads in a file part by part. I work with a stack frame of 4000 bytes, actually I think it can be lower, WFile does not work recursivley. The number of change options (-ddd=ddd) is limited to 26, that is because the alphabet consists of 26 characters, and I don't think that more changes are needed. If there is a need, well, change the source code and recompile. The total number of options must be below 100, this really should do, by the way, all options in a template count! 5 Future directions There are certain things I'd like to do in future versions: - split option, option that splits read-in of files in small parts, so that even large files can be handled - Intuition based user interface - expand templates to handle ALL characters ***************************************************************** last manual update: 08 13,1991