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HARD DISK AND FILE MANAGEMENT WITH ▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒ ▒▒ Take direct control of your computer. _______ ____|__ | n(tm) --| | |------------------- | ____|__ | Association of | | |_| Shareware |__| o | Professionals -----| | |--------------------- |___|___| MEMBER Copyright 1988, 1989 Helpware. Dan Baumbach 100 Bayo Vista Way #6 San Rafael, CA 94901 415 453-9779 Compuserve ID # 71320,1277 You Probably Didn't Pay For This Software, But It Really Isn't Free. DIRECTOR is being marketed as Shareware. A Shareware program can be downloaded from numerous bulletin boards around the country. It may also come on a disk with other Shareware programs, the disk usually being sold for under $5.00. The philosophy behind Shareware is simple. Good quality software can be obtained for free, or practically so, for you to try out. You are free to copy the programs and pass them on to friends. They also can use the program and see if it meets their needs. If only after trying out the product any of you decide you like the program and find yourselves using it regularly, you are required to register with the author and pay the usually low registration fee. Because Shareware authors don't have to pay the high costs of advertising and distribution, they can provide you with high quality software at very reasonable prices. However, Shareware will only exist if you register for the programs you are using. Major software companies are constantly announcing release dates of new products and then later pushing forward those release dates by many months. The reason for these delays is that good software takes a long time to develop and debug. The same is true for good Shareware. The DIRECTOR programs, DL.EXE and DB.EXE, took a long time to develop and I am constantly trying to make them run faster and add new features. It is only through your support that I'll be able to continue to do this. The registration price for DL and DB are 25.00. When you register, you will be sent the latest versions and a complete manual on disk. For $10.00 more you can also get a printed copy of the manual. I am also available by phone or on Compuserve, where my ID # is 71320,1277, to answer any questions or receive any suggestions for future releases. So, if you are using DIRECTOR and like it, please register. This program is produced by a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). ASP wants to make sure that the shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to resolve a shareware-related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at P.O. Box 5786, Bellevue, WA 98006 or send a Compuserve message via easyplex to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536" DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY THIS SOFTWARE AND MANUAL IS SOLD "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES AS TO PERFORMANCE OF MERCHANTABILITY OR ANY OTHER WARRANTIES WHETHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. BECAUSE OF THE VARIOUS HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE ENVIRONMENTS INTO WHICH THIS PROGRAM MAY BE PUT, NO WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE IS OFFERED. GOOD DATA PROCESSING PROCEDURES DICTATES THAT ANY PROGRAM BE THOROUGHLY TESTED WITH NON-CRITICAL DATA BEFORE RELYING ON IT. THE USER MUST ASSUME THE ENTIRE RISK OF USING THE PROGRAM. ANY LIABILITY OF THE SELLER WILL BE LIMITED EXCLUSIVELY TO PRODUCT REPLACEMENT OR REFUND OF THE PURCHASE PRICE. This is DIRECTOR Release 1.0. A complete set of DIRECTOR Release 1.0 should include the following programs: DL.EXE Directory and file manager. DLCONFIG.EXE Configuration program for DL.EXE. DB.EXE File manager. DBCONFIG.EXE Configuration program for DB.EXE. DIRECTOR.DOC Complete manual for DIRECTOR. DIRQUICK.DOC Quick start manual. DIRREG.DOC Registration form. TABLE OF CONTENTS About Disks and Directories................................. 1 Introduction................................................ 6 What's New in Version 2 of DL.EXE........................... 8 What's New in Version 2.50 of DL.EXE........................ 9 What's New in Version 2 of DB.EXE........................... 10 What's New in Version 2.50 of DB.EXE........................ 12 What is DIRECTOR ........................................... 13 How to Use DIRECTOR ........................................ 14 DL.EXE and DLCONFIG.EXE..................................... 15 Using DL.EXE................................................ 17 DL.EXE Directory View Commands Escape/Exit......................................... 17 Viewing Files....................................... 17 Changing Drives..................................... 17 Changing Directories................................ 18 Renaming Directories................................ 18 Moving Directories.................................. 18 Making Directories.................................. 18 Removing Directories................................ 18 Searching for Files................................. 19 Utility Menu........................................ 19 Printing a Directory Tree........................... 19 Hide or Unhide Directories.......................... 19 About DL.EXE........................................ 19 Drive and File Statistics........................... 19 DL.EXE File View Commands Escape/Exit......................................... 20 Viewing and Printing Files.......................... 20 Running Your Text Editor............................ 21 Marking, and Unmarking Files........................ 21 Remarking Files..................................... 22 Coping Files........................................ 22 Moving Files........................................ 22 Changing File Names When Copying or Moving.......... 24 Deleting Files...................................... 25 Renaming Files...................................... 25 Sorting Files....................................... 25 Running Programs.................................... 25 DL.EXE File View Commands Continued The Utility Menu.................................... 25 Printing File List and File Text.................... 26 Using a File Specification Filter................... 26 Changing File Attributes............................ 26 Directory and File Statistics....................... 27 Command Summary for DL.EXE.................................. 28 DB.EXE AND DBCONFIG.EXE..................................... 31 Using DB.EXE................................................ 33 DB.EXE Commands............................................. 33 Escape/Exit......................................... 33 Viewing Files....................................... 33 Printing Files...................................... 34 Running Your Text Editor............................ 34 Marking and Unmarking............................... 34 Remarking Files..................................... 35 Coping Files........................................ 35 Moving Files........................................ 35 Changing File Names When Copying or Moving.......... 37 Deleting Files...................................... 38 Renaming Files...................................... 38 Sorting Files....................................... 38 Running Programs.................................... 38 The Utility Menu.................................... 38 Printing a File List................................ 38 Printing Marked Files............................... 39 Changing File Attributes............................ 39 About DB.EXE........................................ 40 Using a File Specification Filter................... 40 Directory and File Statistics....................... 40 Command Summary For DB.EXE.................................. 41 The ASP Ombudsman........................................... 43 Registration Form........................................... 44 Page 1 ABOUT DISKS AND DIRECTORIES If you are familiar with DOS, and the way one uses it to manage files and directories, you can skip this section and go right to page 11. This section assumes you are very new to personal computers. When you first start out using IBM compatible PCs, there is a lot of information that you need to know just to get started, and the learning curve is very steep. DIRECTOR was written to help you bypass some of this. However there are basic concepts that you must learn first. It is not easy trying to explain a complex idea and make it simple so if sometimes I sound condescending, please forgive me, I just want to make sure you understand the information. Computers use floppy diskettes and hard disks for permanent storage of information. Anything that is stored on a hard disk or a floppy diskette is called a file. Programs, documents and databases are all stored in files. A file name has two parts. The first part is the filename. This can consist of any combination of up to eight letters or numbers. The second part of a file name is the extension. The extension is optional; many filenames don't have them. Certain files (like programs) must have them. An extension can consist of any combination of up to 3 letters or numbers. The only characters DOS doesn't allow in a filename are: . " / \ { } : | < > + + ; ,. A period '.' always separates a filename from an extension. Some examples of filenames are: WP.EXE LOTUS.COM DBASE.EXE README.DOC COMMAND.COM AUTOEXEC.BAT Programs that you run on your computer must have an extension. This extension tells DOS that they are programs and therefore how they have to be loaded. The extension for programs is always COM EXE or BAT. Page 2 You can see which files are on your hard disk or diskette by typing 'DIR' at your DOS prompt and pressing the Enter key. Your screen will look something like this: COMMAND COM 23612 5-15-87 3:20a ANSI SYS 1651 5-15-87 3:20a ASSIGN COM 1523 5-15-87 3:20a ATTRIB EXE 8234 5-15-87 3:20a BACKUP COM 17216 5-15-87 3:20a CHKDSK COM 9819 5-15-87 3:20a COMP COM 3241 5-15-87 3:20a DISKCOMP COM 5776 5-15-87 3:20a DISKCOPY COM 6224 5-15-87 3:20a DRIVER SYS 1350 5-15-87 3:20a EDLIN COM 7495 5-15-87 3:20a FDISK COM 6731 5-15-87 3:20a FIND EXE 6403 5-15-87 3:20a FORMAT COM 11649 5-15-87 3:20a Even though DOS demands that we use a period between a filename and extension, it conveniently forgets to do so when showing you its file list. Instead you see the file name, a number of spaces, the extension, the size in bytes, and date and time of last change to the file. Typing DIR only gives you a list of files. If there are a lot of them, some will scroll off the screen before you can read them. If you want to copy any of them or view their contents, you have to use other commands. That's why DIRECTOR was written. Page 3 Typing DB on the same disk will give you a screen like this: EXIT │VIEW │EDIT │COPY │DELETE │RENAME │MOVE │SORT │MARK │RUN IT ESC │──┘ │^──┘│F1 │F2 │F3 │F4 │F5 │F6 │F7 ANSI.SYS 1709 9-16-1987 12:00 PM │ APPEND.EXE Program 5794 9-16-1987 12:00 PM │ ASSIGN.COM Program 1530 9-16-1987 12:00 PM │ ATTRIB.EXE Program 10656 9-16-1987 12:00 PM │ BACKUP.COM Program 30048 9-16-1987 12:00 PM │ CHKDSK.COM Program 11923 9-16-1987 12:00 PM │ COMMAND.COM Program 25332 9-16-1987 12:00 PM │ COMP.COM Program 4183 9-16-1987 12:00 PM │ DEBUG.COM Program 16000 9-16-1987 12:00 PM │ DISKCOMP.COM Program 5848 9-16-1987 12:00 PM DISKCOPY.COM Program 6264 9-16-1987 12:00 PM You see the filenames and the extensions separated by a period. You see the same information that a DIR command gives you but the information doesn't scroll off the screen. You can scroll up and down a page at a time. There is a highlighted bar that you can move by using the arrow keys to highlight a particular file. Once that file is highlighted, you can press Enter and view its contents. You can also copy it or delete it while in the program. And if you have a mouse, you can use it to perform all of these operations. Since floppy disks don't have a very large capacity, you can store all the files in one place and see them by typing DIR. However, hard disks have a very large capacity, and it would be very unwieldy to store all our files in one place; so we break up hard disks into what are called directories. A directory name is like a file name and follows the same rules. A directory name can have an extension just like a file but it is rarely used. Most directory names just consist of any combination of eight letters or numbers. Hard disks are divided up into what is called a directory tree. At the base of the tree is what is called the root directory and branching out are what are called sub directories. You can move from one sub directory to another by the CHDIR or CD command and you can create sub directories by the MKDIR or MD command. You can find out what sub directories are on your hard disk with DOS's Tree command. Page 4 However, like the DIR command with to many files, if you have too many directories on your hard disk they will just scroll off the screen with TREE. DL.EXE was written to provide you with a visual display of the layout of your hard disk. Once inside DL you can make directories, remove directories, rename directories, view the files in any directory as well an change directories with ease and without having to use DOS commands. A portion of a typical screen in DL looks like this: EXIT │VIEW │DRIVE │CHANGE │RENAME │MOVE │MAKE │REMOVE │SEARCH ESC │──┘ │F1 │F2 │F3 │F4 │F5 │F6 │F7 C:\DOS\AST ROOT │ ╠══════BAT │ ║ ╚══════AAA │ ╠══════DOS │ ║ ╚══════AST │ ╠══════FONTWARE │ ║ ╠══════BCO │ ║ ╠══════CSD │ ║ ╠══════DDF │ ║ ╚══════TDF ╠══════PAINT You can see the tree layout of your directories. You can use the arrow keys to move up and down the directory tree. As you do this, the row above the directory tree will show you what your current path is. A path not only tells you what directory you're currently in, but also the sub directories before it. In other words, it tells you the path you need to take to get from the main or 'ROOT' directory or your disk to the directory you're currently in. The directory your currently in is called the current directory. In this example the path says C:\DOS\AST. That means I am in the AST sub directory of DOS. DOS is a sub directory of the root directory of drive C:. In DL you don't need to know that. You just have to highlight the directory you want and DL takes care of the rest. Page 5 There is one more thing you need to know before you're ready to learn about DIRECTOR; that is about DOS's path command. DOS is not very smart or intuitive so we have to give it help. When you want to run a program you must be in the sub directory where the program resides in order to run it. For instance say you wanted to run your word processor. To do so you normally type WP and press Enter. However you must be in the sub directory where your word processor resides or you will get one of DOS's infamous messages: "Bad command or file name". The same holds for running DB.EXE from DL.EXE which you will want to do if you want to see what files are in a particular directory. For that we have the PATH command. The PATH command tells DOS where to look to find a program that isn't in the directory you are currently in (the current directory). For example if you put DL and DB in a directory called UTILITY on drive C:, you could tell DOS to look in the UTILITY directory after the current directory by typing "PATH=C:\UTILITY;". However most of the time you put your PATH command in a file called AUTOECXEC.BAT. This file is always read when you start the computer and consists of certain DOS commands. If you're using a hard disk, chances are you already have an AUTOEXEC.BAT file in your root directory. If it doesn't have a PATH command, you can add one or you can modify an existing PATH command with DOS's editor EDLIN or any text editor. The PATH command tells DOS all the different paths where it should look for programs. Each path is separated by a semi colon. The path command in my AUTOEXEC.BAT file is: PATH=C:\UTIL;C:\DOS;C:\;C:\NORT;C:\BAT; You will find numerous references to 'wild cards' in the documentation. In poker, a wild card can be used as any card you want, whether it be an ace or a two. Similarly a DOS wild card can represent any letter or number in a filename. A '?' can represent any letter and a '*' can represent any group of letters. '*.COM' is translated by DOS to mean any file with a COM extension. '??CONFIG.EXE' will be translated by DOS as any file where the last six letters of the filename is CONFIG and the extension is EXE. If you're just starting out, I've given you a lot of information some of which might be confusing to you. If you have any questions, feel free to call me at (415) 453-9779. If I'm not available you can leave a message and I'll get back to you. Since I'm not a big software company and I'm only charging $25.00 for these programs, I'll be calling you back collect if you're calling from out of the area. Page 6 INTRODUCTION There are a number of products on the market that will read your entire hard disk, give you a directory tree and file list. The trouble is that in reading your entire disk, they take a long time to load and therefore I would never use them unless I had a lot of files to copy. Then PC Magazine came out with DR.COM, RN.COM and CO.COM. RN just read your hard disk for directories so it was very fast. CO and DR just read the files in one directory so they were also very fast. They were great, or almost. The trouble was you could only run DR and not CO from RN. DR could be used to view the contents of files but couldn't copy more than one file at a time. CO couldn't be run from RN but you could use it to mark, copy, move or delete multiple files. In other words you had three programs where two would have been ideal. Also it would have been nice if they would run in color and had mouse support. Not being entirely satisfied with DR, RN, and CO, I decided to write DIRECTOR to do in one or two programs what those three would do. Along the way, I also added a few more features andmore will be coming in future versions. DL.EXE is my combined version of RN, CO and DR. It gives you a directory tree for your current drive or whatever drive you specify on the command line. Pressing Enter on any highlighted directory will give you a sorted file list for that directory. Pressing Enter again will show you the contents of any highlighted file. For extra speed, when you don't need to see a directory tree, I wrote DB.EXE. DB gives you a file list for any selected directory. Because it doesn't need to read all the directories on your hard disk, it is very fast. You can view binary and text files. You can print a copy of the file list or a copies of any marked file. You can mark files for copying, moving or deletion and they both work in color and can be operated with a mouse. Not being an assembly language programmer, I wrote these in Turbo C. Because they are written in a high level language, the fact that they are EXE files rather than COM files and the addition of other features, make them quite a bit fatter than the programs that inspired them. However they are still pretty fast and they are a lot faster than the programs that read every directory and file on your disk. I've come to rely on these programs a lot and use them often. I hope that you also find them useful and easy to use. Page 7 The second most enjoyable thing to writing programs and getting them to work to your liking, is seeing that someone else likes the program too and finds that it makes his or her computing life easier. I hope you find these programs fun and useful and perhaps indispensable to doing your computer work. If you do, tell your friends about them, and give them copies. Perhaps the third most enjoyable thing is getting paid for doing something you love to do. Therefore I have released these programs as Shareware. If you find that you use DIRECTOR regularly, You are expected to register your ownership and pay the registration fee. Your registration will enable me to continue to improve these programs as well as develop new ones. The charge for registration and ownership DIRECTOR is $25.00. Registration entitles you to receive the latest versions and for $5.00 extra, a printed manual. A registration form appears at the end of this document and in the file DIRREG.DOC. Site licenses are also available. For site licenses see the file DSITE.DOC. Most commercial software is developed in teams and tested by many people. Just being one person it's sometimes hard to see the forest through the trees and see what features are needed, what are unnecessary and where bugs may be hiding. For aid in these respects I'd like to thank Rob Wenz, Don Wilson, Janet Cooper and Phillip Jacka. Most of all I'd like to thank Dave Eden for his suggestions, complaints, and encouragement, and especially for constantly pushing me to make these programs better. Page 8 What's New in Version 2.0 of DL.EXE Previous versions of DL allowed directory names of eight characters. Version 2.0 allows for a full 12 characters. When making a new directory in DL, the new directory is now highlighted. When searching for a file in DL, you can specify that DL skips to the next directory to continue its search. When searching for a file, DL previously loaded up DB sorted by filename. Now DB shows the files as they appear on the disk (not sorted). DL now shows hidden directories and gives you the ability to hide and unhide them, In DL F9 gets you a UTIL menu where you can 1 Print the Directory List 2 Hide or Unhide directories 3 Get Information about DB The loading of DL and the screen I/O are a little faster. Page 9 What's New in Version 2.50 of DL.EXE DL now works with partitions larger than 32 MB in DOS 4.XX and Compaq DOS 3.31. Because of the size of the file allocation table in these large partitions, DL will need at least 140 KB of memory to run when using large disk partitions. DL now comes with a configuration program, DLCONFIG.EXE. You can use DLCONFIG to modify DL to run in black and white and change the way it prints the directory tree. DL.EXE will now work in 43 line EGA mode and 50 line VGA mode. DOS 2.XX will not allow you to rename a directory. When previous versions of DL were run under DOS 2.XX and you tried to rename a directory, you got an error message saying that your entry was incorrect. This has been fixed. In version 2.50 of DL, it says "Not Avail" under the menu choice "Rename Dir", when running under DOS 2.XX. Page 10 What's New in Version 2.0 of DB.EXE After printing a file list, DB now does a form feed. If the target disk is full, DB will stop copying or moving and will no longer scroll through the directory entries beeping. There was a bug in DB where it might sometimes give an extra directory entry after performing a copy or move, that has been fixed. When DB sorts by date, the most recent files are now displayed first. DB now supports command line switches for different sorts. "/e" sort by extension. "/d" sort by date. "/s" sort by size. "/u" unsorted DB how shows the System attribute. PGDN now goes all the way to the last file. In DB F9 gets you a UTIL menu where you can 1 Print File List 2 Print File Text 3 Change Attributes 4 Get Information about DB In DB if when copying or moving to another drive, if you don't specify a directory, it will copy or move to the current directory. You can now print a file list or file text when using DOS 2.XX DB uses DOS calls to perform all its file work. Therefore it will not be able to delete or copy or rename a file with characters not recognized by DOS. In earlier versions, if you tried to delete a file with illegal characters in the name, the file name was removed from the display even though the file was not deleted. In version 2.0, if the file cannot be deleted, the file name will remain on the screen. Page 11 What's New in Version 2.0 of DB.EXE In version 1.0 of DB, if a file list was being printed and the printer became inoperative, you would get a disk-error message. In version 2.0, if the printer goes off-line, DB will just abort the printing operation and not give you an error message. Version 1.0 of DB used DOS's print spooler to do file printing. As it turned out, this was not such a good idea. When printing a file, DB spawned DOS's program PRINT.COM. When you finished working in DB, PRINT.COM, being a memory resident program, stayed in memory in the space above the top of DB thereby partitioning your memory and making it impossible to get to the memory above PRINT.COM. Version 2.0 uses simple bios commands to print a file. Though this not as convenient; you now have to wait while your document is printed before doing anything else, at least you won't have to reboot your computer to run any program larger than 128k. In DB if you don't have a mouse and mouse driver installed, there won't be a scroll bar in the view and you will be able to view 80 columns of text. If you do have a mouse installed, you will first have a scroll bar in the view section and have 78 columns of text. You can remove the scroll bar and view 80 columns of text by pressing F9 or clicking on Scroll Bar. Subsequent presses of F9 or clicks on scroll bar will toggle the scroll bar on and off. The screen I/O routines in DB have been rewritten for greater speed. You have the ability to change a files name when copying and moving though I didn't make it clear in the original documentation. In version 2 if the path you entered is ambiguous, DB will query you before changing the file's name. Page 12 What's New in Version 2.50 of DB.EXE DB now comes with a configuration program called DBCONFIG.EXE. By running this program you can install your favorite text editor or word processor in DB and change many of DB's defaults. When a text editor is installed, pressing ^Enter will load the text editor and the highlighted file. Against my better judgement but by popular demand, DB will now run programs. You can run any highlighted BAT, COM or EXE program by pressing ^X or picking Execute from the UTIL menu. DB will now run in EGA 43 line mode and VGA 50 line mode. What's New in Version 2.53 of DB.EXE DB works more like DIR in that it will accept a filename on the command line. For instance, DB *.exe will display all the files in the current directory with the EXE extension. Page 13 What is DIRECTOR? OR What's New in Versions 3.0 of DL.EXE and DB.EXE I'm a programmer not a marketing man so it was fine with me that these programs were known by the names or their EXE files, DL.EXE and DB.EXE. However, even I agree that DL and DB are hardly memorable names; so after sifting through all the suggestions of my friends, I've decided upon the name DIRECTOR. From now on, these programs and any additions to them will be released under the name of DIRECTOR. So besides a name, what's new? Well to start with DL now contains all of DB. There were too many features that I wanted to add to these programs, that their being separate programs made very cumbersome so I combined them into one program. DL is still very fast and is even faster when you want to see a file list of a particular directory. DL will now let you remove directories that have files in them, but only after first warning you. It will also let you move directories. You'll notice that the menu bar in DL has changed. (Please don't hate me for it. I have trouble with it too.) That was necessary because I wanted to have some consistency between the file view and the directory view; particularly I wanted F4 to be move in both. There are more clear error screens, telling you if your target disk is full or if you're trying to move a file where one already exists. DL will now let you overwrite a file when moving if you wish but didn't worry, you'll be adequately warned first. The stats screen is now clearer. The disk usage gauge is something I borrowed from a program DF by Ed Trujillo. Ed, if you're reading this, consider yourself a registered user of DIRECTOR. DL and DB will now let you print any group of marked files. DL and DB now completely unload themselves from memory and use a batch file to run the programs so they use only about 3.5K of memory when running programs You can now run all programs that are marked instead of just the highlighted one. I've also added a 'File Spec' option to the UTIL menu. You can use this to enter a particular file spec such as *.EXE and all the files will be reread and only these matching the file spec will be shown. You can use the same file spec with DB on the command line and it will load up showing only those files. Page 14 How to Use DIRECTOR This version of DIRECTOR is made up of 4 programs, DL.EXE and DB.EXE and their respective configuration programs DLCONFIG and DBCONFIG. DL and DB are 2 utility programs that can help you navigate around your hard disk. DL.EXE gives you a directory tree for a particular drive from which you can change directories and view files. DB.EXE if the file viewing portion of DL. If you use a mouse, you will be glad to know that both of these programs can be operated easily with a mouse. These programs will also work in EGA 43 line mode or VGA 50 line mode. DIRECTOR will run on all color and monochrome monitors on DOS 2.0 or later. IF on some monochrome monitors, the screen seems too washed out for liking, you can configure DIRECTOR to work only in monochrome. DL.EXE wants a minimum of 200 kilobytes of memory to run properly. Under DOS 4.0 where you are able to have hard disk partitions of over 32 megabytes DL may require more memory depending on the size of the hard disk partition. DB would like at least 100 kilobytes of memory to run in. DL.EXE can handle drives with up to 350 directories and directories of up to 450 files. It can handle paths of up to nine directories deep. Page 15 Using DL.EXE and DLCONFIG.EXE DL.EXE is designed to give you a sorted directory tree for any hard or floppy disk drive. Once in the directory tree, you can add, move, remove, hide and unhide, or rename directories, You can exit DL to a particular directory or view the files of any directory. You can change drives, print a copy of the directory tree or search for any file. Pressing Enter or double clicking a mouse on a highlighted directory will bring up a sorted file list of that directory. In that file list, you can mark files for copying, moving, printing, or deletion. You can easily view the contents of any file in ASCII or hexadecimal. You can also run any individual or marked group of COM, EXE and BAT programs. DLCONFIG In order to customize DL to your liking, the configuration program DLCONFIG is provided. With DLCONFIG, you can modify DL so that it runs only in black and white, install your favorite text editor or word processor, change the default sort of the file list and change the printing options. You load DLCONFIG by first changing to the directory where DLCONFIG resides and typing DLCONFIG. DLCONFIG will load DL into memory. DLCONFIG will first look for DL in its own directory. If it can't find it there, it will look for DL in the directories on your path. If it can't find DL on your path, DLCONFIG will exit with an error message. DLCONFIG will only work with DL version 3.0. If it finds another version of DL, DLCONFIG will exit saying "Wrong Version of DL.EXE". The first question asked by DLCONFIG is on what drive and in which directory does it reside. If, for instance, you copy the DIRECTOR programs to the UTIL directory of your drive C, you would enter 'C:\UTIL'. DL allows you to run a text editor or word processor to edit highlighted files. You are first asked to enter the drive and directory of the text editor and then you need to supply its name. I use the shareware program Qedit which resides in a directory on my drive D so I would enter 'D:\QEDIT ' and Q.EXE. The file list of DL is normally sorted by filename. The next question asked by DLCONFIG is if you'd like to have it sorted differently. Your sort choices are filename, extension, date, size and unsorted. Page 16 Mouse users are provided with a scroll bar in the directory and file views of DL and DB. By clicking on the scroll bar, you can scroll up or down one page or one line at a time. When you are viewing the contents of files, mouse users will also have a scroll bar on the left side of their screen. Some users have complained about the loss of a full screen for viewing because the scroll bar takes up the left 2 columns. If you are one of these people, you can choose not to have the scroll bar visible by making that choice in DLCONFIG. Even if the scroll bar is not shown, you will still be able to scroll up and down by clicking on the leftmost column of your screen. On your computer screen, DL uses the high order ASCII characters '═', '║', '╠', and '╚' to display the directory tree. Some printers, can't print these characters so DL uses '+' and '=' when printing. DLCONFIG will ask you if your printer can print the high order ASCII characters and if you want your printer to use them to print the directory tree. DLCONFIG will then ask you if you want to have DL send a particular setup string to the printer before it prints the directory tree. You can enter any setup string such as bold or compressed and each time you print, DL will first send the string to the printer. When printing is finished, DL will send a reset to the printer so those setup codes will no longer be active. The last question DLCONFIG will ask you is if you want a form feed sent to the printer after printing. Some printers automatically do a form feed after printing so if DL does one also, you'll waste a sheet of paper. You can run DLCONFIG as many times as you want to change DL to your liking. DL.EXE To run DL.EXE type 'DL' at the DOS prompt and press Enter. DL will load up and give you a directory tree for your drive. The current directory will be highlighted. You can also specify a particular drive at the command line and it will load up with information about that drive. For example to run DL on drive D: type 'DL D:' and press Enter. Once in DL, the UP and DN arrow keys, the PGUP and PGDN keys and the Home and End keys will let you scroll the highlight bar through the directory tree. If you have a mouse and the driver is loaded, there will be a mouse cursor on the upper left hand side of the screen just below the menu bar. The two arrows at the far left of the screen are scroll bars. Page 17 Clicking anywhere on the top arrow with the left mouse button will scroll down 1 directory at a time. The right button will scroll down 1 page at a time. Similarly clicking anywhere on the lower arrow with the left button will scroll up 1 directory at a time and the right button, 1 page at a time. Holding a mouse key down, will have the same repeat effect as holding a keyboard key down. You can also highlight a directory by clicking on it with either button. Typing the first letter of a directory, will cause the highlight bar to move to that directory. For example on my computer, typing a 'b' will highlight the 'BAT' directory. Typing a 'b' again will then scroll down to the 'BENCH' directory. This letter search is circular so if you are in the 'UTIL' directory, you can type 'b' to get back up to the 'BAT' directory. If any directories in the tree are hidden, they will have an '(H)' after them. On the top two rows of the screen you will see a menu bar naming particular functions and the particular keys associated with those functions. Mouse users can also click on the menu bar to run those functions. In addition there are a number of keyboard commands to run those functions. The additional keyboard commands are accessed by entering a particular letter with the CTRL key or the Alt key. The use of the CTRL key is indicated by putting a '^' before the letter. For example a CTRL-C will be indicated in this documentation by ^C. The use of the Alt key is indicated by putting a '@' before the letter. An Alt-P is therefore indicated by @P. ESC EXIT Pressing the Escape key or clicking your mouse on the ESC part of the menu will exit DL and get you back to DOS in the directory you started DL from. FILES Pressing the Enter key or clicking on the FILES part of the menu will give you a listing of files in that directory. Also clicking with either mouse button on a highlighted directory will get you a file list for that directory. DRIVE (Change Drive) If you press F1 enter a ^C or click on the DRIVE part on the menu, a dialog box will appear on the screen asking you what drive you want to change to. You can enter the first letter of the drive or click on the drive letter and you will get a directory tree for that particular drive. When you exit DL EXE you will return to the drive and directory you started from. Page 18 CHANGE (Change Directory) IF you press F2 or click on the CHANGE part of the menu DL will exit leaving you in the directory that was last highlighted. RENAME (Rename Directory) If you press F3, enter a ^R or click on RENAME and a directory other than the root directory is highlighted, you will be presented with a dialog box prompting for a new name for the highlighted directory. Enter the new name and press Enter or click on the Enter Bar and DOS willing, the directory name will be changed and the new name will then be highlighted. If the directory name you entered already exists or DOS doesn't like what you entered, you will get a beep and an error box telling you so. You can then press or click on Enter to try again, press or click on Escape to cancel. This program uses a DOS function to rename a directory, and therefore it won't accept blanks or the characters . " / \ [ ] : | < > + = ; , . DOS 2.XX does not allow renaming directories. When running DL under DOS 2.XX, it will say "Not Avail" under RENAME. MOVE (Move directory) Through this function you can move an entire directory and all the files to another subdirectory or drive. Pressing F4 or clicking on MOVE will bring up a dialog box asking where you want to move that directory to. For example let's say you have a directory of Lotus 123 spreadsheets called 'ACCTS' and you want to make it a subdirectory of your directory 'LOTUS'. Highlight the 'ACCTS' directory and press F4. In the dialog box enter '\LOTUS' and press Enter and the entire directory will be moved. The new path will now be '\LOTUS\ACCTS'. MAKE (Make Directory) Press F5, click on MAKE or press ^M and you will be presented with a dialog box prompting for a new directory name to be added to the highlighted directory. Enter the new name and press Enter or click on the Enter Bar and DOS willing, the directory will be created and the screen updated. If the directory name you entered already exists or DOS doesn't like what you entered, you will get a beep and an error box telling you so. You can then press or click on Enter to try again, press or click on Escape to cancel. A DOS function call is used to make a directory, therefore entries with blanks or the characters . " / \ [ ] : | < > + = ; , won't be accepted. REMOVE (Remove Directory) DL will let you remove a directory with files in it but first you will get a beep and a warning about the files that will be lost. If you want to continue and therefore press Enter at the warning, DL will start by first deleting all the files in that directory. If at any time you want to stop, pressing any key or clicking the mouse will stop the process immediately. Once all the files have been deleted, DL will remove the directory. You activate the Remove Directory by pressing F6, ^V or clicking on 'REMOVE' on the menu bar. Page 19 SEARCH DL will let you search the whole disk for a particular file. Press F7, click on SEARCH or press ^H and a dialog box will prompt you for the file name to search for. If you are not sure of the name or you want to search for files with similar names, you can use the DOS Wild Cards * and ?. After pressing or clicking on Enter, DL will start with the root directory and go through the entire disk looking for a match to your entry. If a match is found, DL will show a sorted file list with the desired file highlighted. When it is through searching one drive, DL will give you the options of continuing the search on other drives too. UTIL Pressing F9 or clicking on the UTIL part of the menu bar will pull down the utility menu. From the utility menu you have the options of printing the directory tree, hiding or unhiding directories, and getting more information about DL.EXE. You can use the up and down arrow keys to move the menu bar to the desired option, press the capitalized letter of the desired option, or click on the desired option. PRINT DIR LIST This option will send a copy of your directory tree to the printer. If the printer is turned off or not on-line, DL will give you an error message and give you the chance to try again. You can also print a copy of the directory tree from outside the UTIL menu by pressing F8 or ^P. HIDE/UNHIDE While in the UTIL menu clicking on Hide/unhide or pressing 'H' will hide an unhidden directory or unhide a hidden directory. When a directory is hidden, it won't be displayed by a by a DIR command in DOS. However you can still access it with a CD command. A hidden directory is displayed with a '(H)' after the name. ABOUT DL.EXE DL.EXE is part of the DIRECTOR group of utilities and is Shareware. It is not free. If you are using it regularly, you should register. I hope that wherever you got DL.EXE, you also got DB.EXE as well as the documentation for them. If that is not so, the information gotten from this menu choice will let you know that and give you my name and address for registration and receiving complete copies of DIRECTOR. STATS (Statistics) Pressing F10, ^S or clicking on STATS will bring up a box showing you the particular file and byte statistics for the drive you are on. Page 20 The File View in DL.EXE Pressing Enter on any highlighted directory will give you a new screen with a sorted list of files for that particular directory. This file view is similar to the directory view with a menu bar along the top and a mouse scroll bar along the left side. Pressing PGUP or PGDN will move 23 files at a time. Just like in the directory view, you can click your mouse on the left scroll bar. The left button moving one file at a time and the right button moving 23 files at a time. Home and End will take you to the beginning and end of the file list. In 43 line EGA and 50 line VGA DB will scroll 41 or 48 lines respectively. Holding the mouse buttons down will have the same repeat action as the keyboard. You can click on a file with either button to highlight it. Once a file is highlighted, clicking the left button on it will mark it with a little arrow head and clicking the right button on it will show you its contents. Clicking with the left button on a highlighted file that is already marked, will unmark it. Like in the directory view, typing the first letter of a file, will cause the highlight bar to move to that file. For example on my computer, typing a 'd' will highlight DB.EXE. Typing a 'd' again will highlight 'DL.EXE'. This letter search is circular so if the file 'WP.EXE' is highlighted, you can type 'd' to get back to DB.EXE. ESC EXIT Pressing Escape, or clicking on ESC will exit back to the directory view. VIEW Clicking on VIEW or pressing Enter will give you a screen displaying the contents of the file. Binary files can be viewed this way also. You can scroll through the file just like in a word processor with the UP, DN, PGUP, and PGDN keys. Pressing END will take you the end of the file. Pressing Home will take you to the beginning. DL reads the entire file to go to the end and then to go back to the beginning so this may take a while on large files. Mouse users can have a scroll bar on the far left that works just like the one in the main screen of DL if they specified it in DLCONFIG. Even if you specified that you don't want to see the scroll bar, the left most column will act as if there were one there if you click your mouse on it. Along the top of the screen there is also a menu bar. Mouse users can use the HOME and END choices to go the beginning and end of the file being viewed. Pressing Escape or clicking on EXIT or pressing Enter will land you back in the file list. You can print the file by clicking on the PRINT portion of the menu, pressing ^P or pressing Page 21 F8. DL prints a file by reading it into a buffer and using BIOS commands to print it. Since DB does no print spooling, you have to wait while the document is being printed before doing anything else. Pressing F1 or clicking on the HEX part of the menu bar will allow you to view the file in hexadecimal. Future versions of DL will also allow byte editing in hex. Unlike earlier versions, the viewed file is not wrapped at the right end of your screen. If you are viewing a binary file or one with particularly long lines, you can use the left and right cursor arrows or click on the left and right arrows on the menu bar to see more of the file. For your convenience in viewing binary files and my programming convenience, all lines longer than 130 characters will be wrapped at column 130. If you are unable to get the view function to work in DL, it may be that you don't have enough available memory. DL needs at least 200 kilobytes to run. EDIT If you've run DLCONFIG and specified a text editor you can press the Ctrl key and the Enter key together (This is abbreviated as ^Enter) or click on the EDIT choice of the menu bar and DL will run your text editor and if possible, have it load up the highlighted file. In DL you can mark a group of files for copying, deletion or moving, printing and if they are programs, running. If no files are marked, DL will act only on the highlighted file. MARK You can mark a file in 5 ways. First, highlight the file. Then pressing the Plus (+) key, pressing the space bar or pressing the right left arrow key will mark the file. This will be indicated by a little arrow head pointing to the file on the far left. Clicking on the highlighted file with the left mouse button will mark the file as well. You can also use the mark menu which will give you the choice of marking just the highlighted file, unmarking the highlighted file, marking or unmarking all files or remarking. I'll explain remarking in as minute. UNMARK Similarly you can unmark a marked file in 5 ways. Highlight the file. Then pressing the Minus (-) key, pressing the left arrow, pressing the space bar, or clicking the with the right mouse button on the highlighted file will unmark the file and remove the arrow head. You can also use the mark menu as described above. You can mark as many files as you like. Pressing the Ctrl key and the right arrow key will mark all the files. Similarly pressing the CTRL key and pressing the left arrow will unmark all files. Page 22 Mouse users will need to click on the mark menu and choose Mark All or Unmark All to accomplish the same. DL will not permit you to mark a hidden file. To find out more about hidden files and how to unhide them, please read the section on changing file attributes. REMARK Once a file has been operated on (copied, moved, or printed) the mark arrow is replaced by a little circle. If you want to repeat an operation on the same files, pressing the asterisk '*' or clicking on the on the mark menu and choosing Remark will mark all files with a little circle preceding it. COPY Clicking on COPY, pressing F1 or ^C will bring up a dialog box asking where you want the files to be copied. You can copy to any directory or drive. DL allows you to change the filename when copying. You can also use the DOS wild cards, '*' and '?', when you copy. You can even copy the file to the same directory but with a different filename. The only thing DL won't let you do, is copy a file on top of itself. DL checks the path that you've entered to see if it exists. If DL can't find it, it assumes that you want to change the filename and will do so if it can make a pathname and filename out of your entry. Be careful, because if the last part of your pathname is entered incorrectly, DL will copy the file to the first part of the pathname and change the file's name to the last part of the pathname. If you want DL to enter the pathname for you, you can press the TAB key which will switch you back to the directory view. There you can change drives if you want to copy to another drive. You then highlight the desired directory and click on it or press F1. You will then be back in the file view with the highlighted path entered in the dialog box. Once DL has copied a file, a little circle will appear in front of the filename to let you know that it has been copied. Page 23 Before trying to copy a file, DL first looks to see if the target directory or drive has enough room. If it does, then DL copies the file to the new directory or drive. If there isn't enough room for the file, DL will move on to the next file. DL will go through all the marked files and copy only those that fit. The remaining files will stay marked. If the target disk gets full, DL will stop, leaving the still uncopied files, marked. If you are copying to a floppy diskette, you can then change diskettes and repeat the copy procedure on the remaining marked files. You can do this as many times as necessary until all of the marked files are copied. If while copying a group of files, you decide you want to stop the operation, press Escape and DL will stop after copying the file its presently working on. MOVE Pressing F4, clicking on MOVE or pressing ^M will activate MOVE. Move works like copy except that when the files are copied to the new directory or drive they are removed from the current one. If you are moving files to another directory on the same drive, all that happens is that the file is renamed. If you are moving files to another drive, the files will first be copied to the new drive and then deleted from the old one. If you are trying to move a file to a drive or directory, where a file by that name already exists, DL will beep and warn you of the other file's existence. If you still want to make the move DL will do so overwriting the other file. Like copying you can also change a file's name when moving. If in addition to specifying a path you add a filename or a filename with the wild cards, DL will change the names of the copied files. This can lead to ambiguity if for instance you entered an incorrect pathname which could be mistaken for a pathname and filename. If there is any question as to what your intentions may be DL and DB will ask you. Page 24 DL and DB will copy and move in the following manner: ONE FILE MARKED What Entered What DL and DB Will Do Valid Pathname Copies or moves to Path. Valid Pathname + Copies or moves to Path and Filename and Extension changes name to new Filename. Valid Pathname + Filename DL will ask you if you want to with no extension. make the copy or move and change the name. Filename entered with the DL will change the name, wildcards '*' and '?' making a new name out of the wildcards. MANY FILES MARKED What Entered What DL and DB Will Do Valid Pathname Copies or moves to Path. Valid Pathname + Copies or moves to Path and Filename and Extension changes all files to the new Filename. Valid Pathname + Filename Since you are copying many with no extension. files, DB will assume that you entered a path that doesn't yet exist and DB will ask you if you want to create it. Filename entered with the DB will change the names, wildcards '*' and '?' making new names out of the wildcards. Page 25 DELETE You can delete the highlighted file or the marked files by clicking on DELETE, pressing F2 or pressing ^D. Before deleting the files, Dl and DB will ask you if you are sure. Pressing or clicking on enter will set DB on its work. If while deleting a group of files, you decide to stop, Press the Escape key and they will stop. RENAME You can only rename one file at a time, so when pressing F3, clicking on RENAME or pressing ^R, DL acts only on the file that is highlighted. DL and DB use DOS calls to rename a file and therefore will only let you use a name that DOS will allow. DOS doesn't like filenames with blanks or the characters . " / \ [ ] : ; | < > + = , in it. SORT Pressing F5 or clicking on SORT will bring up the sort menu. You can enter the first letter of your sort choice or you can scroll the highlighted bar to Filename, Extension, Date, Size or Unsorted and press Enter and the screen will be updated with the sorted or unsorted directory . The Unsorted option gives you the file listings in the order that they appear on your disk. You can also click a mouse on the choice and it will work the same way. There is also a quick way to sort with bypassing the menu. ^F sorts by filename. ^E sorts by extension, ^T sorts by date and ^Z sorts by size. RUN IT You can run any highlighted program or any group of marked EXE, COM and BAT files by pressing F7 or clicking on 'RUN IT' on the menu bar. If only 1 file is marked, DL will immediately run it. If a group of files are marked, DL will first ask you for confirmation before running them. If none of the marked files have a BAT, EXE of COM extension, DL will make no attempt to run them. DL creates a batch file and then completely exits so it won't take up any memory while you are running programs. When you are finished, the batch file will run DL again UTIL Pressing F9 or clicking on the UTIL part of the menu bar will pull down the utility menu. From the utility menu you have the options of printing the file list, printing the contents of the marked file, changing the attributes of the marked files, and using a file specification to see only some of the files. You can use the up and down arrow keys to move the menu bar to the desired option, press the capitalized letter of the desired option, or click on the desired option. Page 26 Print File List. Press F8, ^P or choose print filelist from the UTIL menu and DL will print out a copy of the file list just like it is displayed on the screen. Print File Text. You can print a copy of any text file with this selection. If you have no files marked, DL will just print the highlighted file, otherwise it will print all the marked files. DL uses BIOS calls to print a file and does no print spooling so you must wait for the file to be printed before continuing. The default printer is LPT1, but this can be redirected through DOS's mode command. CHANGING FILE ATTRIBUTES Every file on your disk has a directory listing. This directory listing, contains the file name, the extension, the size in bytes, the date of last modification and other useful information. This directory listing also contains a number called the attribute byte. This attribute byte tells DOS if the directory listing is that of a file, a subdirectory or a volume label. A directory listing for a file, can be any one of 4 different numbers or any combination thereof. DL shows the files attributes as the last entry after the file modification date. The choices are: System : Abbreviated as Sys, this attribute doesn't signify much, except the DOS boot files usually have this attribute. A file with the system attribute turned on cannot be seen by a DOS 'DIR' command and cannot be read by other files. However DL will show it. Hidden : Abbreviated as Hid in DL, this attribute also hides a file from normal DOS operations. However, like Sys, DL will show it. Read Only: Abbreviated as R/O, a file marked as read only cannot be modified, or deleted by normal DOS operations. You need not worry about this when using DL to delete or rename files Archive : Abbreviated as Arc in DL, this is used as an indicator in back up operations. A file marked with the archive attribute has not been backed up since the last modification. Page 27 DL allow you to change a file's attributes very easily. Choose Attributes from the UTIL menu or just press ^A and a screen will pop up showing the attributes for the highlighted file or if only one file is marked the marked file. If the attribute is turned on an 'ON' will appear before the attribute. If the attribute is turned off an 'OFF' will appear before the attribute. If more than one file is marked, all the attributes in the dialog box will be off. Pressing the first letter of the attribute or clicking the mouse on the attribute will turn it off or on. When you have made the desired changes, pressing Enter will change them permanently. Pressing Escape will cancel the operation. DL uses DOS function calls to perform the attribute change. If for some reason you have a file with 'illegal' characters in it (A filename DOS doesn't consider valid) DL may not be able to make the change. File Spec Looking for a few files in a large directory can be trying even with the different possible sorts. For that reason, I've provided a way to filter out the files you don't want to see and displaying only those that you want to see. Choose 'File spec' form the UTIL menu or press ^L and a dialog box will prompt you for a file specification. This can be a particular file name or a combination of a filename and wild cards. DL will use this file spec and reread the directory displaying those files that meet your specification. For example, if I enter the filespec 'D*.EXE', DL will display only those files that begin with the letter D and have an EXE extension. STATS (Statistics) Pressing F10, ^S or clicking on STATS will bring up a box showing you the particular statistics for the directory you are viewing. Page 28 COMMAND SUMMARY FOR THE DIRECTORY VIEW OF DL.EXE Enter : View contents of highlighted directory. F1 or ^C : Change Drive. F2 : Exit DL to the highlighted directory. F3 or ^R : Rename directory. F4 : Move directory. F5 or ^M : Make directory. F6 or ^V : Remove directory. F7 or ^H : Search disk for file. F8 or ^P : Print directory tree. F9 : Pull down Utility Menu s Show file count and disk usage. h Hide or unhide directories. d Information about DL.EXE F10 or ^S : Show file count and disk usage. Page 29 COMMAND SUMMARY FOR THE FILE VIEW IN DL.EXE Enter : View the highlighted file. ^Enter : Run Text Editor and load highlighted file. F1 or ^C : Copy the highlighted or marked file(s). F2 or ^D : Delete the highlighted or marked file(s). F3 or ^R : Rename the highlighted file. F4 or ^M : Move the highlighted or marked file(s). F5 : Sort Menu f sort by filename. e sort by extension. d sort by date. s sort by size. u show unsorted listing. ^F : Sort by filename. ^E : Sort by extension. ^T : Sort by date. ^Z : Sort by size. ^U : Show unsorted listing. F6 : Mark Menu. + or Right Arrow : Mark file. - or Left Arrow : Unmark file. Space Bar : Mark or Unmark file. ^Right Arrow : Mark all but the hidden files. ^Left Arrow : Unmark all files. F7 or ^X : Run marked programs. F8 or ^P : Print file list. Page 30 COMMAND SUMMARY FOR THE FILE VIEW IN DL.EXE @P : Print marked files. ^A : Change file attributes. ^L : File specification. F9 : Util Menu. L Print file list. T Print marked files. A Change file attributes. F Enter file specification. F10 or ^S : Display disk usage statistics. Page 31 DB and DBCONFIG Like DL, DB comes with its own configuration program. It is very similar to DLCONFIG but asks you questions that are only pertinent to the file view. DB.EXE DB.EXE is the file list portion of DL.EXE. You can use DB when you are wanting to work in a specific directory and have no need for and don't want to wait for a directory tree. Most of the time, I use DB instead of typing DIR, to see what's in a directory and be able to scroll through it and view files. Like DIR, You can also specify a specific filename and wildcard combination on the command line and DB will display only those files meeting that specification. For example entering DB *.DOC will display only the files with a DOC extension. The syntax for DB is: DB [directory] [filename.ext] [/e] [/b] Using DBCONFIG.EXE In order to customize DB to your liking, the configuration program DBCONFIG is provided. With DBCONFIG, you can modify DB so that it runs only in black and white, install your favorite text editor or word processor, change the default sort of the file list and change the printing options. You load DBCONFIG by first changing to the directory where DBCONFIG resides and typing DBCONFIG. DBCONFIG will load DB into memory. DBCONFIG will first look for DB in its own directory. If it can't find it there, it will look for DB in the directories on your path. If it can't find DB on your path, DBCONFIG will exit with an error message. DBCONFIG will only work with DB version 3.0. If it finds another version of DB, DBCONFIG will exit saying "Wrong Version of DB.EXE". Page 32 DB allows you to run a text editor or word processor to edit highlighted files. You are first asked to enter the drive and directory of the text editor and then you need to supply its name. I use the shareware program Qedit which resides in a directory on my drive D so i would enter 'D:\QEDIT ' and Q.EXE. The file list of DB is normally sorted by filename. The next question asked BY DBCONFIG is if you'd like to have it sorted differently. Your sort choices are filename, extension, date, size and unsorted. Mouse users are provided with a scroll bar in the directory and file views of DB. By clicking on the scroll bar, you can scroll up or down one page or one line at a time. When you are viewing the contents of files, mouse users will also have a scroll bar on the left side of their screen. Some users have complained about the loss of a full screen for viewing because the scroll bar takes up the left 2 columns. If you are one of these people, you can choose not to have the scroll bar visible by making that choice in DBCONFIG. Even if the scroll bar is not shone, you will still be able to scroll up and down by clicking on the leftmost column of your screen. DBCONFIG will then ask you if you want to have DB send a particular setup string to the printer before it prints a file list or the contents of a file. You can enter any setup string such as bold or compressed and each time you print, DB will first send the setup string to the printer. After printing, DB will send a reset to the printer thereby removing the setup information. The last question DBCONFIG will ask you is if you want a form feed sent to the printer after printing. Some printers automatically do a form feed after printing so if DB does one also, you'll waste a sheet of paper. You can run DBCONFIG as many times as you want to change DB to your liking. Page 33 Using DB.EXE DB loads up with a menu bar on top, a mouse scroll bar on the far left and if you have a mouse, a mouse cursor on the upper left right under the ESC menu entry. Under the menu bar, the first 23 files are shown on the screen with the top one highlighted. Besides the filename, the kind of file (if that can be identified by the name), the size in bytes, the date it was created and the attribute such as Archive or Hidden are also shown. Pressing UP or DN will move the highlight bar up or down one file. Clicking anywhere on the top arrow with the left mouse button will scroll down 1 file at a time. The right button will scroll down 1 page at a time. Similarly clicking anywhere on the lower arrow with the left button will scroll up 1 file at a time and the right button, 1 page at a time. Holding a mouse key down, will have the same repeat effect as holding a keyboard key down. You can also highlight a file by clicking on it with either button. Typing the first letter of a file, will cause the highlight bar to move to that directory. For example on my computer, typing a 'D' will highlight the 'DB.EXE' directory. Typing a 'D' again will then highlight DBCONFIG.EXE. Like in DL this letter search is circular. Once a file is highlighted, clicking the left button on it will mark it with a little arrow head and clicking the right button on it will show you its contents. Clicking with the left button on a highlighted file that is already marked, will unmark it. ESC EXIT Pressing Escape, or clicking on ESC will exit back to DOS and the directory you started DB from. VIEW Clicking on VIEW or pressing Enter will give you a screen displaying the contents of the file. Binary files can be viewed this way also. You can scroll through the file just like in a word processor with the UP, DN, PGUP, and PGDN keys. Pressing END will take you the end of the file. Pressing Home will take you to the beginning. DB reads the entire file to go to the end and then to go back to the beginning so this may take a while on large files. Mouse users can have a scroll bar on the far left that works just like the one in the main screen of DB if they specified it in DBCONFIG. Even if you specified that you don't want to see it, the left most column will act as if there were one there if you click your mouse on it. Along the top there is also Mouse users can use the HOME and END choices to go the beginning Page 34 and end of the file being viewed. Pressing Escape or clicking on EXIT or pressing Enter will land you back in the file list. You can print the file by clicking on the PRINT portion of the menu, pressing ^P or pressing F8. DB prints a file by reading it into a buffer and using BIOS commands to print it. Since DB does no print spooling, you have to wait while the document is being printed before doing anything else. Pressing F1 or clicking on the HEX part of the menu bar will allow you to view the file in hexadecimal. Future versions of DB will also allow byte editing in hex. Unlike earlier versions, the viewed file is not wrapped at the right end of your screen. If you are viewing a binary file or one with particularly long lines, you can use the left and right cursor arrows or click on the left and right arrows on the menu bat to see more of the file. For your convenience in viewing binary files and my programming convenience, all lines longer than 130 characters will be wrapped at column 130. EDIT If you've run DBCONFIG and specified a text editor you can press the Ctrl key and the Enter key together (This is abbreviated as^Enter) or click on the EDIT choice of the menu bar and DB will run your text editor and if possible, have it load up the highlighted file. In DB you can mark a group of files for copying, deletion or moving, printing and if they are programs, running. If no files are marked, DB will act only on the highlighted file. MARK You can mark a file in 5 ways. First, highlight the file. Then pressing the Plus (+) key, pressing the space bar or pressing the right left arrow key will mark the file. This will be indicated by a little arrow heat pointing to the file. Clicking on the highlighted file with the left button will mark the file as well. You can also use the mark menu which will give you the choice of marking just the highlighted file, unmarking the highlighted file, marking or unmarking all files or remarking. I'll explain remarking in as minute. UNMARK Similarly you can unmark a marked file in 5 ways. Highlight the file. Then, pressing the Minus (-) key, pressing the left arrow key, pressing the space bar, or clicking the right button of the mouse on the highlighted file will unmark it. You can also use the mark menu as described above. You can mark as many files as you like. Pressing the Ctrl key and the right arrow key will mark all the files. Similarly pressing the CTRL key and pressing the left arrow will unmark all files. Mouse users will need to click on the mark menu and choose Mark All or Unmark All to accomplish the same. DB will not permit you Page 35 to mark a hidden file. To find out more about hidden files and how to unhide them, please read the section on changing file attributes. REMARK Once a file has been operated on (copied, or moved) the mark arrow is replaced by a little circle. If you want to repeat an operation on the same files, pressing the asterisk '*' or clicking on the on the mark menu and choosing Remark will mark all files with a little circle preceding it. COPY Clicking on COPY, pressing F1 or ^C will bring up a dialog box asking where you want the files to be copied. You can copy to any directory or drive. DB allow you to change the filename when copying. You can also use the DOS wild cards, '*' and '?', when you copy. You can even copy the file to the same directory but with a different filename. The only thing DB won't let you do, is copy a file on top of itself. DB checks the path that you've entered to see if it exists. If DB can't find it, DB assumes that you want to change the filename and will do so if DB can make a pathname and filename out of your entry. Be careful, because if the last part of your pathname is entered incorrectly, DB will copy the file to the first part of the pathname and change the file's name to the last part of the pathname. Once DB had copied a file, a little circle will appear in front of the filename to let you know that it has been copied. Before trying to copy a file, DB first looks to see if the target directory or drive has enough room. If it does, then DB copies the file to the new directory or drive. If there isn't enough room for the file, DB will move on to the next file. DB will go through all the marked files and copy only those that fit. The remaining files will stay marked. If the target disk gets full, DB will stop, leaving the still uncopied files, marked. If you are copying to a floppy diskette, you can then change diskettes and repeat the copy procedure on the remaining marked files. You can do this as many times as necessary until all of the marked files are copied. If at any time while copying a group of files and you decide you want to stop the operation, press Escape and DB will stop after copying the file it's presently working on. MOVE Pressing F4, clicking on MOVE or pressing ^M will activate MOVE. Move works like copy except that when the files are copied to the new directory or drive they are removed from the current one. If you are moving files to another directory on the same drive, all that happens is that the file is renamed. If you are moving files to another drive, the files will first be copied to Page 36 the new drive and then deleted from the old one. If you are trying to move a file to a drive or directory, where a file by that name already exists, DB will beep and warn you of the other file's existence. If you still want to make the move, DB will do so overwriting the other file. Like copying you can also change a file's name when moving. If in addition to specifying a path you add a filename or a filename with wild cards, DB will change the names of the copied files. This can lead to ambiguity if for instance you entered an incorrect pathname which could be mistaken for a pathname and filename. If there is any question as to what your intentions may be DB will ask you. Page 37 DB will copy and move in the following manner: ONE FILE MARKED What Entered What DB Will Do Valid Pathname Copies or moves to Path. Valid Pathname + Copies or moves to Path and Filename and Extension changes name to new Filename. Valid Pathname + Filename DB will ask you if you want to with no extension. make the copy or move and change the name. Filename entered with the DB will change the name, wildcards '*' and '?' making a new name out of the wildcards. MANY FILES MARKED What Entered What DB Will Do Valid Pathname Copies or moves to Path. Valid Pathname + Copies or moves to Path and Filename and Extension changes all files to the new Filename. Valid Pathname + Filename Since you are copying many with no extension. files, DB will assume that you entered a path that doesn't yet exist and DB will ask you if you want to create it. Filename entered with the DB will change the names, wildcards '*' and '?' making new names out of the wildcards. Page 38 DELETE You can delete the highlighted file or the marked files by clicking on DELETE, pressing F2 or pressing ^D. Before deleting the files, DB will ask you if you are sure. Pressing or clicking on enter will set DB on its work. If while deleting a group of files, you decide to stop, Press the Escape key and DB will stop. RENAME You can only rename one file at a time, so when pressing F3, clicking on RENAME or pressing ^R, DB act only on the file that is highlighted. DB used DOS calls to rename a file and therefore will only let you use a name that DOS will allow. DOS doesn't like filenames with blanks or the characters . " / \ [ ] : ; | < > + = , in it. SORT Pressing F5 or clicking on SORT will bring up the sort menu. You can enter the first letter of your sort choice or you can scroll the highlighted bar to Filename, Extension, Date, Size or Unsorted and press Enter and the screen will be updated with the sorted or unsorted directory . The Unsorted option gives you the file listings in the order that they appear on your disk. You can also click a mouse on the choice and it will work the same way. There is also a quick way to sort with bypassing the menu. ^F sorts by filename. ^E sorts by extension, ^T sorts by date and ^Z sorts by size. RUN IT You can run any highlighted program or any group of marked EXE, COM and BAT files by pressing F7 or clicking on 'RUN IT' on the menu bar. If only 1 file is marked, DL will immediately run it. If a group of files are marked, DL will first ask you for confirmation before running them. If none of the marked files have a BAT, EXE of COM extension, DL will make no attempt to run them. DL creates a batch file and then completely exits so it won't take up any memory while you are running programs. When you are finished, the batch file will run DL again UTIL Pressing F9 or clicking on the UTIL part of the menu bar will pull down the utility menu. From the utility menu you have the options of printing the file list, printing the contents of the marked files, changing the attributes of the marked files, rereading the directory with a particular filter and getting more information about DB.EXE. You can use the up and down arrow keys to move the menu bar to the desired option, press the capitalized letter of the desired option, or click on the desired option. Print File List. Press F8, ^P or choose print filelist from the UTIL menu and DB will print out a copy of the file list just like it is displayed on the screen. Page 39 Print File Text. You can print a copy of any text file with this selection. If you have no files marked, DB will print the highlighted file otherwise it will print all the marked files. DB use BIOS calls to print a file and do no print spooling so you must wait for the file to be printed before continuing. The default printer is LPT1, but this can be redirected through DOS's mode command. CHANGING FILE ATTRIBUTES Every file on your disk has a directory listing. This directory listing, contains the file name, the extension, the size in bytes, the date of last modification and other useful information. This directory listing also contains a number called the attribute byte. This attribute byte tells DOS if the directory listing is that of a file, a subdirectory or a volume label. A directory listing for a file, can be any one of 4 different numbers or any combination thereof. DB shows the files attributes as the last entry after the file modification date. The choices are: System : Abbreviated as Sys, this attribute doesn't signify much, except the DOS boot files usually have this attribute. A file with the system attribute turned on cannot be seen by a DOS 'DIR' command and cannot be read by other files. However DL and DB will show it. Hidden : Abbreviated as Hid in DL and DB, this attribute also hides a file from normal DOS operations. However like Sys, DL and DB will show it. Read Only: Abbreviated as R/O, a file marked as read only cannot be modified, or deleted by normal DOS operations. You need not worry about this when using DL or DB to delete or rename files Archive : Abbreviated as Arc in DB, this is used as an indicator in back up operations. A file marked with the archive attribute has not been backed up since the last modification. DL allow you to change a file's attributes very easily. Choose Attributes from the UTIL menu or just press ^A and a screen will pop up showing the attributes for the highlighted file or if only one file is marked the marked file. If the attribute is turned on an 'ON' will appear before the attribute. If the attribute is turned off an 'OFF' will appear before the attribute. If more than one file is marked, all the attributes in the dialog box will be off. Pressing the first letter of the attribute or clicking the Page 40 mouse on the attribute will turn it off or on. When you have made the desired changes, pressing Enter will change them permanently. Pressing Escape will cancel the operation. DB uses DOS function calls to perform the attribute change. If for some reason you have a file with 'illegal' characters in it (A filename DOS doesn't consider valid) DB may not be able to make the change. File Spec Looking for a few files in a large directory can be trying even with the different possible sorts. For that reason, I've provided a way to filter out the files you don't want to see and displaying only those that you want to see. Choose 'File spec' form the UTIL menu or press ^L and a dialog box will prompt you for a file specification. This can be a particular file name or a combination of a filename and wild cards. DL will use this file spec and reread the directory displaying those files that meet your specification. For example, if I enter the filespec 'D*.EXE', DL will display only those files that begin with the letter D and have an EXE extension. ABOUT DB.EXE DB.EXE is part of the DIRECTOR group of utilities and is Shareware. It is not free. If you are using it regularly, you should register. I hope that wherever you got DB.EXE, you also got DL.EXE as well as the documentation for them. If that is not so, the information gotten from this menu choice will let you know that and give you my name and address for registration and receiving complete copies of DIRECTOR. STATS (Statistics) Pressing F10, ^S or choosing Statistics from the UTIL menu will bring up a box showing you the particular statistics for the directory you are viewing. Page 41 COMMAND SUMMARY FOR DB.EXE Enter : View the highlighted file. ^Enter : Run Text Editor and load highlighted file. F1 or ^C : Copy the highlighted or marked file(s). F2 or ^D : Delete the highlighted or marked file(s). F3 or ^R : Rename the highlighted file. F4 or ^M : Move the highlighted or marked file(s). F5 : Sort Menu f sort by filename. e sort by extension. d sort by date. s sort by size. u show unsorted listing. ^F : Sort by filename. ^E : Sort by extension. ^T : Sort by date. ^Z : Sort by size. ^U : Show unsorted listing. F6 : Mark Menu. + or Right Arrow : Mark file. - or Left Arrow : Unmark file. Space Bar : Mark or Unmark file. ^Right Arrow : Mark all but the hidden files. ^Left Arrow : Unmark all files. F7 or ^X : Execute Program. F8 or ^P : Print file list. @P : Print marked files. ^A : Change file attributes. Page 42 COMMAND SUMMARY FOR DB.EXE ^L : Reread the directory with a particular file specification. F9 : Util Menu. L Print file list. T Print marked files. A Change file attributes. F Reread directory with a file spec. D Give information about DB.EXE F10 or ^S : Display disk usage statistics. Page 43 This program is produced by a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). ASP wants to make sure that the shareware principle works for you. If you are unable to resolve a shareware-related problem with an ASP member by contacting the member directly, ASP may be able to help. The ASP Ombudsman can help you resolve a dispute or problem with an ASP member, but does not provide technical support for members' products. Please write to the ASP Ombudsman at P.O. Box 5786, Bellevue, WA 98006 or send a Compuserve message via easyplex to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536" REGISTRATION FORM ____DIRECTOR Release 1.0 Diskette, Manual and Registration...................... @ $30.00 ea $________ ____DIRECTOR Release 1.0 Diskette, Manual on Diskette and Registration.......... @ $25.00 ea $________ Subtotal $________ California residents please add 6% sales tax: tax $________ Total $________ Please make checks payable to: Helpware 100 Bayo Vista Way #6 San Rafael, CA 94901 Name:_________________________________________________________________ Company:_______________________________________________________________ Address:_______________________________________________________________ Where did you obtain DIRECTOR__________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Any comments, suggestions or bugs?_____________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ REGISTERING BY PHONE For your convenience, you may now register for DIRECTOR through the Public (Software) Library with their 800 number and use your credit card. PSL will contact me the same day and I will send you the latest release of DIRECTOR. Their phone number is 1-800-2424-PSL My name is Dan Baumbach I am a member of ASP., The Association of Shareware Professionals. I can be reached either at the above address, on CompuServe electronic mail 71320,1277, or at (415) 453-9779. Thank you for your registration.