Shareware Grab Bag/Shareware Grab Bag.iso/011/admin.lqr/ADMIN.DOC

Text File | 1985-06-03 | 19KB | 418 lines

                             Dr. Bob's Utilities
                  A Company Devoted to Testing Your Integrity

ADMIN.DOC ** V1.0   1-19-85 **

If you use this program regularly and would like to contribute to my
efforts and support work on future utilities -

                            Send $20.00
to:

Dr. Bob's Utilities
444 Maple Lane
St. Paul MN, 55112        (let me know of other utilities you would like)




                         Dr. Bob's Utilities

Notice:  Version E of DR. Bob's Admin RBBS utilities is now
available to registered user of earlier versions (and to anyone who
is willing to become a registered user).

The admin utilities handle most of your RBBS sub-directory maintenance
and can save you MANY hours of tedious work.  The utilities expand your
filenames, insert the current date, and sort files alphabetically or
by date without screwing up your file headers.  In normal use, you simply
type "MAINTAIN" and the maintain.bat file takes over.  You are shown each
line in your upload directory and asked which subdirectory files it should
be sent to.  That's it!  Everything else is automatic.


                    *****   NEW FEATURES   *****

Some features of the new version:

     -  Handles files up to 1 meg. in size
     -  Includes the POST program which replaces STREW
     -  Handles directory files with plain english names
     -  Puts today's date on files in the upload directory
     -  Accepts a flag to specify the column the date is in
     -  Safer, more reliable, sometimes faster file handling

Registered users of earlier versions may send a $5.00 update fee
to receive the new version by return mail.

Non-registered users may send $20 to become registered users and
receive the new version by return mail.

The new version is customized with the registered users name appearing
each time it is run so it will not be available for public downloading.
Earlier versions will continue to be available on the boards.


Registered users will receive information about new uses, updates, new utility
programs, etc. They may also ask questions by mail or

Until 6/3/85:            Terrapin Station BBS
                             612  623-1156
                       (A truly magnificent BBS).
               HOURS: weekdays after 6 pm CST  - weekends 24 hrs

*****************************************************************************

NEW TERRAPIN HOURS AND PHONE -- AFTER JUNE 3, 1985
    HOURS -- 24 HOURS, 7 DAYS A WEEK
    PHONE -- 612/623-0152

*****************************************************************************


Leave Terrapin RBBS messages for Bob Ray (me).

A new release is planned which should be a significant improvement over this
one.  One change will be that most of the .EXE files of this version will be
combined into one program.  This new release will assume that your system is
working with the current versions so it can make assumptions about the format
of your directories. It will also include various other goodies. Once I have
some indication of support for my efforts (people become registered users),
I will finish the new version and release it.


******************************************************************************
ADMIN:
     These programs in conjunction with STREW.EXE do almost all of your RBBS
directory maintenance. To do your maintenance you simply type:

MAINTAIN ALPHADIR DATEDIR

             where ALPHADIR is the name of your alphabetical master directory
             and   DATEDIR is the name of you date-sorted  master directory.

DISCLAIMER:
     These utilities have no bugs that I know of (although you can easily
produce some apparent bugs if you don't read this document carefully).
They are sold without warranty of any kind.  Use them at your own risk.

THE FIRST TIME:
    Before you use these utilities, do a COPY DIR??.* DIR??.BAK
       (safety first).  After you are COMPLETELY convinced that
things are ok, you can delete the .BAK files.

Then do the following:

1.  Your directory headers, (if any) must have a character in the
    left-most column that has an ASCII value less than 48.  The
    space, | * < > and : characters are all fine.  If you
    have a header made of just text, the easiest solution is to use a
    text editor to insert a space at the beginning of each line.
    Other good choices for the first character are | and *.
    Otherwise your header will be sorted along with your filenames,
    and may be trashed by various of these utilities.

2.  Your should run EXP.EXE on all your RBBS sub-directories if you
    want to use expanded filenames.  Otherwise your filenames
    will become inconsistent.  This only needs to be done once.

3.  If you have used anything other than a "-" as a the delimiter
    in your dates, use a text editor to change to "-".

4.  If your upload directory is not called DIR99, rename it to DIR99.

5.  These utilities will behave unpredictably on files with Tabs in them.
    Remove all tabs before running any of these programs.  Tabs are
    visible in FRED (although FRED tends to go crazy when you use it on
    files with tabs in them).

6.  If you don't have master directories and would like them, do the following:

      COPY DIR10+DIR20+DIR30 MASTER  (using the names of your files)

            You probably don't want to include DIR99. This file (MASTER)
            will have your headers at various points throughout.
            If you have multiple line descriptions of some files, you
            will need to do some work to prevent them from being split
            up or re-ordered during sorting. The easiest method is to
            eliminate them.  If you feel you must have multiple line
            descriptions, you can preserve them by using the complete file
            name for each line and doing a little planning:

            FILE     ASC                     description line1
            FILE     COM|                    description line2
            FILE.    COM|                    description line3

            Notice the use of "|" to make sure they are sorted in the correct
            order.  Another approach is to add the multiple line descriptions
            after you see how the lines will be sorted (making sure that your
            descriptions won't change the sort order).
            The solution is different for date-sorted directories. SYSRTRD.EXE
            sorts on the date and (if the dates are the same) on the right side
            of the line.  Unless care is taken this may separate files you
            want to keep together. If you want to keep files with the same name
            together, sort the dir alphabetically before date-sorting it.  Then
            make sure your multiple line description lines are in alphabetical
            order.  The easiest way to do this is to space over each succeeding
            line:

            FILE     ASC        01-01-85          description line one
            FILE     COM        01-01-85         description line two
            FILE     DOC        01-01-85        description line three


      USORT MASTER
            Using USORT.EXE will move up all your headers to the
            beginning of the file.  For this reason USORT.EXE is not
            used in regular RBBS dir maintenance.  USORT.EXE, unlike
            the other programs in this set, does not replace your
            infile but rather puts its output in a file with the same
            name but with the extension .SRT (e.g. MASTER.SRT).
            MASTER.SRT will have all the various headers from your
            RBBS sub-directories piled up at the beginning. You can then
            use an editor to remove them and add a new header for your
            master directory. Save two versions, one for your
            alphabetical dir one for your date-sorted dir, each with the
            appropriate header. (See #1 above for info about header.) Delete
            MASTER.* and then run SYSRTA.EXE and SYSRTRD.EXE on the two
            files. don't forget which is the date and which the alpha file.

       At this point you may have duplicate entries for some files (if they
       were listed in more than one RBBS sub-directory).  You will need to
       use an editor to remove them. I hope to have a program that will do this
       for you in the near future (RMDUPES.EXE).

       These steps will only have to be done once.  Once you have master
       directories, MAINTAIN.BAT will keep them up to date.

Once you have done these, the utilities will take care of almost
all of your RBBS Directory maintenance.

WARNINGS:

1.   The utilities have several expectations and may get a little crazy
if they are not met.  See the section above "THE FIRST TIME:" for a
description of the necessary conditions.

2.   The maximum file handled by these utilities is a little over 50k.
VERY bad things could happen if you try to process a file larger than
this.  Future releases will exit gracefully if a file is too large. Be
warned - this release will not.  The batch file MAINTAIN.BAT will
show you the file size before working on the file. Abort with CTRL-C if
the file is too large.  (This pause and warning occur only for your
master file lists - it is assumed that your RBBS sub-directories are
less than 50k.)

3.   The dates in dir99 are the dates the files were uploaded. If these
dates go in the sub-directories a while after they were uploaded, users
who try to get a listing of new files with the N(ew) command will not
hear about them if they called while the files were on dir99.  The next
release of these utilities will correct this by putting the current
system date into each line of dir99 when the update is done.

4.   The batch file uses dir0 as a temporary holding file for the dir99
header.  If you have a dir0, either rename it or change the line in the
batch file.  It (the filename used by MAINTAIN.BAT) should have a "dir"
prefix so you can "strew" to it.

WHAT THE UTILITIES DO:
     The utilities DO NOT touch your dir headers as long as the first
character of each line of the header has an ASCII value less than
48 (space . * | = + are all ok). The sort utilities SYSRTA.EXE and
SYSRTRD.EXE report the number of files in each dir (ignoring the header,
if any). 50k limit on file size. DON'T use them on larger files.

     The EXP.EXE program will automatically expand the filenames
in a dir file so that all the extensions line up:

FILE.EXE
FILE.C
FILENAME.DOC

will change to

FILE     EXE
FILE     D
FILENAME DOC

The rest of the line will not be changed.

STREW.EXE is a utility for sending dir99 entries to your RBBS
sub-directories.  It is not included in this set of utilities since I
did not write it.  Future releases of these utilities may have something
like STREW built in.  For now, the utilities will not work well without
it and if you don't have it you can download it from the Terrapin
Station RBBS (see hours and number above).  Using STREW.EXE with these
utilities is described below.

SYSRTA.EXE is an alphabetical sort that ignores case and does not touch your
dir header (if any). It sorts files in memory and will hold files up to 50k.
Bad craziness may result if you try to sort a file larger than this.
MAINTAIN.BAT will show you the file size and warn you about this. Use
CTRL-C to abort if the file size is too big.  If this file size is a problem
there may be several solutions:

     1. Use V. Buerg's sort filter (sortf.lbr available from Terrapin BBS).
     2. Split the file into parts.
     3. Wait for me or someone else to compile the utilities with a large
        memory model compiler.
     4. Wait for me to write a program that will split the file into parts,
        perform the maintenance, then merge-sort it back to the master
        file (not likely to happen any time soon).
     5. Punt.

SYSRTRD.EXE sorts in reverse date order so the new files appear at the top
of the list.  SYSRTRD.EXE assumes that a "-" is used as the date separator.
If you have used something else SYSRTRD.EXE will not work unless you use
an editor to change to a '-'.  SYSRTRD.EXE will behave unpredictably if
another delimiter is used.  SYSRTRD.EXE assumes the date is in standard
MM-DD-YY form but is smart enough to put 01-01-85 above 09-09-84 and changes
1-20-85 to 01-20-85.
50k limit here too.

GETHED.EXE extracts the header from dir99 and places it in a file called
DIR99.HED.  This is so DIR99.HED can be copied to DIR99 and DIR99.HED
deleted at the end of the batch file.  This leaves a new, empty DIR99
for new uploads.
50k file limit.

USORT.EXE is a standard alphabetical sort utility except that it ignores
upper and lower case. It DOES NOT ignore header material and therefore
should not be used unless you want your header sorted in with the rest
of your file.  It is handy for sorting a book index or other alphabetical
list where you want upper and lower case entries treated the same.
     Its use in creating a master directory the first time is described
in the section above (THE FIRST TIME:).  Another use for USORT would be
to help get rid of the headers in a file with multiple headers spread
through it.  Usort would move them all to the front of the file where
they could easily be removed. 50k file limit.

MAINTAIN.BAT is the batch file that takes care of business for you. It is
invoked with MAINTAIN ALPHADIR DATEDIR.

Here is what it looks like:

echo on
cls
rem               RBBS File Maintenance Batch File
rem                             .
rem               from Dr. Bob's Utilities
rem                             .
rem                             .
rem               call with MAINTAIN ALPHADIR DATEDIR
rem               where ALPHADIR is the name of your master alphabetical dir
rem               and   DATEDIR is the name of your master date-sorted dir
rem                             .
rem               e.g.  MAINTAIN DIR90 DIR91
rem                             .
pause
exp dir99
copy dir99 dir99.bak
gethed dir99
copy dir99.hed dir0
del dir99.hed
strew rbbs
sysrta dir10 dir20 dir30  ...put the names of your RBBS sub-directories here
dir %1
pause            ABORT IF SIZE of %1 is > 50,000
sysrta %1
dir %2
pause            ABORT IF SIZE of %2 is > 50,000
sysrtrd %2
rename dir0 dir99
pause            About to delete dir99.bak  (abort with Ctrl-C)
del dir99.bak
rename dir0 dir99

CHANGING MAINTAIN.BAT

     MAINTAIN.BAT can be changed with edlin, FRED, or any ASCII
oriented text editor.

BE SURE TO CHANGE the line with DIR10 DIR20 DIR30 so that it
contains the names of your RBBS sub-directories.  You can use
several lines if necessary as long as each starts with SYSRTA.
If you would rather have your sub-directories in reverse date order,
change sysrta to sysrtrd in the batch file.

If you do not want to have a date-sorted directory, simply delete all
lines with %2 in them and use MAINTAIN ALPHADIR to start up.
(Replace "ALPHADIR" with the name of your dir.)

If you do not want to have an alpha-sorted directory, delete all lines
with %1 in them and change "%2" to "%1" wherever it appears. Use
MAINTAIN DATEDIR to start up. (Replace "DATEDIR" with the name of your dir.)

If you want all your RBBS sub-directories in reverse date order, use
SYSRTRD.EXE to sort all of them.

If you don't want the filename expanded, remove the line with exp.

If you feel daring, remove the "PAUSE" statements


USING STREW WITH THESE UTILITIES:
     STREW.EXE will let you specify RBBS-sub-directories to send the new
files in dir99 to.  Type C  to configure strew and specify RBBS as the
name of the config file.  Specify DIR99 as the upload directory and
specify the prefix for the RBBS sub-directories (usually DIR).
     IMPORTANT: specify the names of your two master directories,
(or one if you only want one) as the default files to "strew" to.
For example, if DIR90 and DIR91 are your two master directories, specify
90,91 as the default file to strew to and DIR as the default prefix. This
will automatically append all the new files to the end of the two master
directories.
     You may want to increase the size of the "strew" field in STREW if
you will be "strewing" the file to several different directories.
     If you would like to leave some files in dir99 instead of sending
them to RBBS sub-directories, simply "strew" them  to dir0.  Dir0
is a temporary file holding the dir99 header. It is later renamed
to dir99.


ABOUT THE SORT ALGORITHM:
     These utilities use a modified quicksort algorithm to sort the lines
of each file.  The lines are read into a continuous buffer and, as they
are read, an array of pointers is set to point to the beginnings of the
lines.  The sort function calls the compare and swap functions. The swap
function swaps the pointers to the two lines, leaving the lines where they
are.  The compare function is tailored to the particular sorting task.
I'm not sure, but I think the quicksort is also modified to improve
performance on a file which is already mostly sorted (as most RBBS files
are).  Future releases will probably have a single sort program which
accepts flags on the command line that will determine its behavior.
e.g.  SYSORT /HRD DIR90
would sort DIR90 in reverse date order and ignore headers.

WHAT'S LEFT FOR YOU TO DO:
     You will still have to tell STREW which directories to send the
files to.
     MAINTAIN will take care of all the normal RBBS DIR maintenance
I know of except that it does not update the message in your header
(if any) giving the number of files and the date of revision.  If
everyone will agree to put a line like the following as line three
of the header:

*      Contains ### Files - Last Update ##-##-##...                        *

and let me know that this is ok, I will have the new version replace this
line with the correct info. (It won't touch the border, it will just go
to the third line, move over a few spaces and punch in the message with
a few leading and trailing spaces for good measure.)

EXAMPLE HEADER:
******************************************************************************
*                       Directory 90 - Lists all files                       *
*                 Contains ### Files - Last Update ##-##-##                  *
*                           Reverse Date Order                               *
******************************************************************************

have fun,


Dr. Bob     aka Bob Ray  (leave Terrapin BBS messages for Bob Ray)
                          **  see hours and number above **

***************************************************************************