CP/M/CPM_CDROM.iso/lambda/soundpot/a/do11.lbr/DO.DZC/DO.DOC

Text File | 1993-10-26 | 3.4 KB | 133 lines

                             DO


    Copyright 1982, 1983 William G. Hutchison, Jr.



          TYPE MULTIPLE CP/M COMMANDS ON ONE LINE


    "DO"  is  a C program designed to make it easier to type
in short commands at the CP/M console. (CP/M is a  trademark
of  Digital  Research, Inc.) Like the program "/.COM" in the
CP/M users group collection, it allows the operator to enter
more than one command on one line, separated  by  semicolons
(;).
    It  works by imitating some of the functions of the CP/M
SUBMIT program. It makes a stack of command lines in reverse
order,  terminating  each  line  whenever  a  semicolon   is
encountered. For those with terminals that allow input lines
longer than 80 characters, it also starts a new command line
whenever  the  current  line  would become filled. It breaks
command lines only at semicolons or spaces, thus  DIR  would
never  be  separated  into  D  IR.  DO  uses  dynamic memory
allocation to store the lines. Thus you  might  run  out  of
memory if you type in a great many lines. In most cases, the
CP/M command line input processor will not allow you to type
anyway  near  this limit, so the error message "Do is out of
memory!" should never appear.
    After creating the list of commands,  DO  traverses  the
list   in  reverse  order,  writing  it  to  a  file  called
A:$$$.SUB. This is  a  temporary  file  used  by  CP/M  upon
restarting  ("Warm  Boot").  It  precedes  each  line by the
length of the line and follows each line by null  characters
up  to  128 bytes. Finally, DO does a call to a "subroutine"
at location 0, which restarts  CP/M.  At  this  point,  CP/M
reads  the commands in A:$$$.SUB. It reverses the order once
again, so they come out right.
    If the A: disk is full before you run DO, it  will  fail
to  create  the  file  A:$$$.SUB. If this happens, CP/M will
probably say "Write error - Disk  full".  If  you  get  this
error  message,  please use STAT on the A: disk to see if it
is really out of space. If you can delete something from A:,
you can try DO again and it should work.
    To run the program, you need a compiled  and  loaded  or
linked  version  of  DO called DO.COM. You must prepare this
with your own C compiler. Next, just type

          DO

    This will make DO type out a brief  description  of  its
operation:

        Usage: DO COM1; COM2; ... COMN
        where COM1 ... COMN are valid CP/M commands






DO.C                                         page 2

    Here are some more examples of using DO:


        DO A:; STAT *.*; B:; STAT *.*

will  list files and sizes on both the A: and B: disks, then
leave you logged in to the B: disk.
        DO A:PIP PRN:=DO.C; A:C DO >LST:; A:AS DO; ERA DO.ASM; A:STAT *.*

will print DO.C, compile it, assemble  the  output  from  C,
erase the intermediate assembly language file, then tell you
how much space is left on the current disk.
    If  you  want  to  do  these sequences repeatedly, it is
better to use SUBMIT. But for improvisation, use DO!
    DO is written in a subset of C called  C/80  version  2.
C/80   is  available  from  the  Software  Toolworks,  14478
Glorietta Drive, Sherman Oaks,  CA  94123,  (213)  986-4885,
CompuServe 70305,170.