Simtel MSDOS 1992 June/SIMTEL_0692.cdr/msdos/dirutl/ff211.arc/FFDOC.DOC

Text File | 1990-01-04 | 17KB | 340 lines

                               FF.COM
                            Version 2.11
                  Copyright 1990 by Keith P. Graham

           FF.COM is a "whereis" type of program which is useful for
      searching large hard disk drives for files. I have taken the idea
      forward another step by adding options to search any number of
      drives, create a batch file of the found files and to delete all
      found files or delete on a prompt. FF.COM is easily expanded
      and I am adding options as fast as they are suggested

           FF.COM can find files on any disk on your system from A: to Z:
      by entering:

                  FF file-pattern A: B: C: etc.

      where FF is the FF.COM command. FF.COM must be in the current
      directory or the path must be set so that FF.COM is on the current
      path. You may rename ff.com to any other valid dos name as long as
      it has the file extension of .COM.

           File-pattern is a DOS file specification. It can be the name of
      the file that you are looking for. It cannot include disk or paths in
      the file pattern, but the pattern can contain DOS wild card characters
      (* and ?). You must have a file-pattern or FF.COM will not be able to
      find anything.

          If the file-pattern begins with the @ character then FF
      will look for a file with the name matching file-pattern. In this
      case, there can be no wild cards in file-pattern. File contains
      instead a list of file patterns to be searched out. The format
      of the file list is that each line of the file must have a
      valid file name or pattern ending with a space or a carriage
      return. Letters after the first space in a line are ignored.
      Lines begining with a space are ignored. This file, then, can
      be a BBS directory listing!

           A: B: C: etc. are disk drives. You may put one disk drive or
      many disk drives. They can be in any order, they can even repeat,
      but they must be real disk drives and if you choose to search a
      floppy diskette the diskette must be in and the drive closed or you
      will get an "Abort, Retry, Ignore" message. Unlike older versions
      you must have a space between drives. If you wish to search
      starting at a certain subdirectory of a disk drive then enter
      the disk and path name for each directory to search.

           If you leave off the drive letter, FF will search only the
      current drive. If you have many drives and want to search them
      almost all the time you can include an environmental variable to
      tell FF where to search. By entering SET FF=A: B: C: D:, you have
      told FF where to search whenever you leave the disk drive letter
      off of the command line. You can put the SET FF=... into your
      autoexec.bat file. You now need spaces between the drive
      letters. You may prefer to use the /E option (see below).

           HINT: Since you can specify any drive you can search many floppies
      by entering:

           FF file-pattern a: b: a: b: a: b:

      while the machine is searching a: you can put a diskette in b: and
      while the machine is searching b: you can put a diskette in a:
      and keep swapping while the program is searching. You must be fast
      and you will have to press the "R" to retry from time to time.

           If, while FF is working, you need to break out, there
      are two methods that you can use. Pressing Ctrl-Break will stop
      FF and ask you you if you want to discontinue the search. If you are
      using the /X switch to execute programs, DOS and the programs
      may reassign Ctrl-Break for their own purposes and make it hard
      or impossible to break out. The second method of breaking out
      of FF is to press a shift key and either the Alt or the Ctrl key
      at the same time. Press shift and Alt or press shift and Ctrl and
      hold them down until FF gives up and returns to the DOS prompt.
      This may not be immediately. FF does not always stop to look for
      keystrokes.

           The slash options (called switches) allow you to do several
      things while you are searching for a file.

      Here is a list of all switches and what they do:

           The /A option includes .ARC and .ZIP files in the search.
      FF will look inside .ARC and .ZIP files for the file.

           The /B option will write out a FFOUND.BAT with the
      the name of the found file and %1 %2 %3 %4 DOS batch variables
      so that you can use ff to initiate more complicated actions.
           The format of FFOUND.BAT is:

          %1 disk:\path\filename %2 %3 %4

      If you wanted to copy all the .OBJ files on a hard disk to a floppy
      you would enter:

                FF *.OBJ c: /B
                FFOUND copy a:


           The /C option turns off Ctrl-Break to speed things up.
      This will make it difficult to change your mind in case of
      an emergency.

           /D allows you to delete all the files you find.

                     WARNING!!!                WARNING!!!
                   YOU CAN DELETE ALL THE FILES ON A HARD
                          DISK WITH GREAT EASE!!!
                     WARNING!!!                WARNING!!!

            FF *.* c: /D  will kill a disk before you know it.
      I use this option to get rid of .BAK files and .PRF files on my
      hard disk. I enter:
            FF *.BAK c: d: /d
            FF *.PRF c: d: /d

            For those with weak hearts I have added the /P option which
      gives a prompt before deleting the file. Pressing the Return will
      delete the file. The Esc key will bypass the file and Ctrl-Break
      will get you out of FF.COM entirely.

           The /E option automatically searches all drives
      starting at C:. This is for people with multiple drives
      who don't want to search the floppies.

          The /F option searches ONLY the directory specified. This
      bypasses a search for subdirectories. This is the fastest option
      to use when there is a known search path.
          To use the /F option you specify directories instead of
      disks. for instance if you needed to search the \u1 and \u2
      subdirectories on disk d: you would enter:
         FF *.* /F d:\u1 d:\u2
      you can place the directory list in an @ file. BBS sysops
      with large disk areas can limit their searches by placing
      all of the BBS dirs in a file named, for example, search.dat
      and then do a fast find using this search data by entering
      FF xyz.zip /f @search.dat. They might want to have a bat
      file with the line:
       FF %1 /f/c/o @c:\utils\search.dat
      this will allow them to search their large disk areas very
      quickly for one file.

          The /G option is for searching for strings within a
      a file. This is a very simple search which will match a
      string in the found file. When a match is found the
      entire line containing the string is printed out. The
      format for this is:
        FF filespec /GxSTRINGx
      where x can be any character as long as it is not included
      in the string for example:
       ff *.doc /g"graphics"
      will look for the word "graphics" in all the DOC files.
      The " " are used by FF to delineate the beginning and end
      of the string. You can use any character including the space
      character. I always use single quotes as in ff *.* /g'string'.
      I used the /G option after GREP although this has little
      in common with that powerful program. It also gives me the
      opportunity to include G_STRING as a label in the MASM code.
      The string match is not case sensitive.

           Use the /H option if you want to find files which may
      be hidden or system files. These files don't normally appear
      in most searches and directories.

           The /I option searches files whose date and time stamp
      is greater than or equal to a date. The date is 6 decimal
      digits immediately following the /I in MMDDYY format.

           The /J option will allow you to jump to the disk and
      sub directory of the found file. When it finds a file FF will
      ask you if you would like to jump to the file. If you answer
      "Y" then the program will jump to the disk and directory and
      exit the program. If you enter "N" then FF will continue its
      search.

           The /K option searches only for files which have not
      been backed up using the DOS BACKUP utility of equivalent.

           The /Lnn option will list only files changed in the last
      nn days. nn must be two decimal digits such as 99 or
      03. /L04 will list files less than or equal to 4 days old.
      There is no correction for leap year, but this will work
      after the year 2000. /L00 will list only the current day's
      files.

           /N makes FF use 13 byte directory names. One way to speed
      up FF is to use only 8 byte directory names. If you have long
      directory names then youm must use the /N in order search
      all directories.

           The /O option is used when you are only looking
      for one file. /O will cause ff to stop after the first find.
      This prevents FF from continuing a long search when
      only one file is wanted. When the @file option is used this
      will find one matching file for each line of the file list.

           The /P option is like the /D option but it offers the
      chance to change you mind before each delete. If you choose
      /P and /D, only the /P will be in effect. In earlier versions
      it was possible to be asked if you wanted to delete a file
      and then the file would be deleted anyway.

           The /S limits search to hidden and system files only.
      The /D and /P options will not delete these files, although
      they will try.

           The /T option lets you follow the search. It traces the
      subdirectories as they are searched.

           The /U = option turns FF into a fancy DIR command.
      FF will only search the current directory on the current disk.

           The /V option gives filesize and creation date and time.
      For ARC files it follows that with the original file size.

           The /W option waits every 23 lines for a keystroke.

           /X means execute a dos command. There are two forms of
      this command. The first will add a file name after a command.
      For instance to copy all found files to the current directory
      enter:
           ff T1*.CBL /x'copy'
      This will do a ff search looking for t1*.cbl and any it finds
      it will execute the copy command. The command follows the
      /X and must be surrounded by a delimiter such as single or
      double quotes.

      The second form of the /X switch uses the & character and
      a number in order to imbed part part or all of a file name
      into a command line. &1 = complete disk, path and name of file.
      (examples: G:\WP50\TEXT\OPTIKS.DOC or C:\UTILS\FF.COM)
      &2 = disk (such as A: or D:). &3 = path (\WP50\TEXT\ or
      \UTILS\ or \ ). &4 = filename.ext (such as OPTIKS.DOC or
      FF.COM). &5 = filename only (OPTIKS or FF). &6 = extension
      (eg. .COM or .DOC).

      To rename all found files to .BAK you would enter:
         ff  *.txt /x'rename &1 *.&5'
      Or to copy all found files to the A: disk
         ff  *.bak /x'copy &1 a:'

      If there is no & on the command line then the &1 form of
      the file name is appended to the end to the string enclosed
      in quotes.

           The /Z option is like /A except it searches ONLY .ARC
      and .ZIP files for the matching file.

           The /? option prints out a list of all the switches and options.

      For those of you with 20 disks that you want searched, the
      environmental variable FF= can be set to the disks you want
      to search. This will save you the trouble of having to enter
      the whole list of disks. FF will look in the environment for
      FF=A:C:X: etc. and if it finds an entry then it will use it.
      If you enter a disk drive list it will use the entered list
      instead. If you enter no disk drive list and there is no
      FF= in the environment then FF will search only the current
      default drive.

      NOTE: The SET FF= command to set the drives to be searched
      must be in all capital letters. You must use spaces between
      the drive letters. Previous versions alllowed you to leave
      them out. The colon after each drive letter is required.

           Charlie Innusa needs to search drives c: though t:, but
      doesn't want to waste room in the environment so the /E switch
      gives him the ability to start at drive c: and start searching
      alphabetically until drive z:.

           For the /A and /V options there are conflicts with some
      of the other options. When you are searching an ARC, certain
      switches will be ignored. The /D and /P switches will not
      be effective as it is unreasonable to ask FF to delete files
      from archives. This is the area of expertise of the ARC
      utility writers. When the /A or /Z option is set and FF
      finds a matching file in an ARC it will write out the ARC name
      as the second variable and the arc file name as the third
      variable in the FFOUND.BAT.

           Four of my friends now use FF.COM and each of them had
      to rename the program because they already had a FF Batch file
      which echoed the form feed character to the printer. FF for
      them stood for Form Feed. (I use EJECT.BAT because I do alot
      of Dbase.) Since 100% of my known ff users had to rename the
      program, I assume that many others did also so I changed the
      program to issue a form feed when there are no parameters or
      options following the FF command. Now my users can use FF to
      find files or issue form feeds. If you want to Form Feed out
      lpt2 then enter FF/2.

           FF.COM needs about 90k to run. I named it FF for "Fast Find"
      hoping to make it faster than the vintage 1984 WHEREIS.COM. It's
      not very much faster. Both programs use the DOS find functions
      to locate files and directories. Phil Katz PKFIND is a little slower
      but has different options. I use my program, not so much to find
      files, but to clean up disks, and manipulate files which tend to
      get spread around the directories on my hard disks.

           I have recently found out that Peter Norton also has
      written a version of Whereis which he also calls FF. The name
      is pure coincedence. I had not seen Norton's program when I
      wrote mine. (His does not have all of the options mine does.)

           By the way, I did not write the original WHEREIS. I first
      saw WHEREIS in a magazine around 1983. I rewrote it for my
      personal use and users of the Champion BBS may have dloaded
      my version. There are many whereis programs, but the success of
      FF.COM shows that there is still a demand for new tricks for
      old dogs.

           This is a free program as long as it is not changed and it
      is distributed along with the documentation. Please do not upload
      it to PC-Rockland, thats where it came from. If you need to get
      in touch with me with complaints or suggestions I can be reached
      at PC-Rockland [phone].

           If you think its worth $5.00 you may feel free to send a
      check, but do not feel obligated. For users who register for
      more than $25.00 worth of my shareware I will ship a disk of
      selected programs. I generally do not mail disks out so do not
      send $5.00 expecting to get anything. For those who wish to
      receive a disk of my shareware, but who do not think its worth
      $25.00 you can call Nelson Ford's Public (Software) Library
      at [phone] (voice line). PSL is more than a Shareware
      disk house. He maintains the very best and most recent versions
      of Freeware and Shareware. Most disk copying companies have
      software thats years out of date. Nelson Ford is a well respected
      name in software and is the only Shareware distributer that
      I have authorized to carry my programs.

                    Keith P. Graham