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DOCUMENTATION FOR SEND.COM Ver 1.6 INTRODUCTION SEND.COM is an enhanced version of the ECHO command, ideal for sending escape sequences to the printer or screen. The documentation is primarily a tutorial on ECHO, SEND and redirection of output. If you already feel expert on ECHO and redirection, you can skip to the final SUMMARY section to get a short manual on SEND. SEND, its source code, documentation, and demonstration files are copyright 1985 by Howard Rumsey and Barry Simon. They are placed in public domain with one restriction and may be used for any purpose including commercial use. It is recomended that the the full set of files be distributed together. The sole restriction is that the two files with copyright notices must be distributed with these copyright notices. Version 1.5 differs from the unnumbered version 1.0 by including discussion of redirection of send through COMMAND.COM and additional $<Cap Letters> commands. SEND.COM was written by Howard Rumsey. The source file is found on the disk together with several demonstration files: MONODEMO.BAT COLORDEM.BAT KEYRD.BAT KEYOFF.BAT PRINTDEM.BAT The first four require you to have installed ANSI.SYS via your CONFIG.SYS file. The first two illustrate the use of SEND with monochrome and color monitors respectively. Keyrd will redefine your F9 key to mean "dir" followed by <Enter> and F10 to mean "cls" followed by <Enter>. Keyoff returns the keys to their original meaning. The final batch file will illustrate the use of SEND if you have an IBM graphics or compatible printer attached to LPT1. This batch file can be run on either monitor, but if you have a color monitor, you should run it with that as tne active monitor. The demonstration files and this documentation were written by Barry Simon. The following files are also included: BOLDPRN.BAT: Uses SEND to printout a file of your choice in boldprint on an IBM printer. Type in the command "boldprn 'filename'" TRIAL.TXT: Used in printdem to illustrate boldprn.bat ANSISYS.ART: An article by B. Simon, which first appeared in the CAPITOL PC Monitor which describes the use of ANSI.SYS. The batch files have numerous remarks embedded in them and you should copy them to your printer. You should note that you couldn't do that if these batch files had used ECHO and embedded escape characters rather than SEND! These programs are hereby placed in the public domain. Documentation for SEND.COM page 1 Comments on this program can be sent to: Barry Simon Howard Rumsey Caltech 253-37 or Caltech 158-79 Pasadena, CA 91125 Pasadena, CA 91125 CompuServe 72426,3722 This documentation can be printed out by turning on your printer, making sure that the paper is properly aligned and typing "copy send.doc prn" at a DOS prompt. If you have an IBM graphics printer, you can get an even nicer copy by typing "boldprn send.doc" at the DOS prompt. INSTALLING SEND.COM Some effort has been expended to keep SEND.COM under 512 bytes so it takes up only one sector if you have a floppy based system. In that case, you need to copy SEND.COM to your utility disk. SEND is not resident so the disk needs to be present whenever SEND is invoked. On a hard disk system copy SEND.COM to a directory which is one of your DOS path search directories set by the PATH command. USING ECHO You may be used to exploiting ECHO in your batch files but may not be aware that it can be invoked from the DOS command line. If that is the case, type in at the DOS prompt: echo hello You need to also hit <Enter> but I won't keep saying that. The response is amusing but not useful. Next try: echo hello > prn More interesting! Still not so useful but at least if you ever want to use your printer as a typewriter (why anyone would want to do this in preference to using a real word processor is beyond me!) you can do it yourself without needing a BASIC program which does precisely that. Now try echo <Ctrl G> where "<Ctrl G>" means to hit a "control-G", that is to depress the <Ctrl> key and strike the G and try echo <Ctrl G> > prn These are decidedly more interesting and you may even think of some uses for them in batch files! Next try turning off your printer, carefully aligning your printer paper, turning your printer back on and typing echo <Ctrl L> > prn <Ctrl L> is the command to send a "top of form" to your printer but if you look carefully you will discover that more than a top of form was sent to the printer. ECHO automatically inserts a carriage return-line feed pair (CR-LF) to the end of any line so Documentation for SEND.COM page 2 your last command first sent a top of form but then advanced the paper one additional line. Annoying, isn't it? Next try: echo <Esc> and echo <Ctrl [> (Escape and Control-[ are the same). This doesn't do what you might hope. <Esc> is interpreted by DOS as a desire on your part to abort the present command and thus you cannot use ECHO at the command line to send an <Esc> to either the screen or your printer. This is unfortunate since ANSI.SYS allows you to do all sorts of nice things if you send the proper "escape sequences" to the screen and many printers can be told to turn on boldface or other neat things by sending escape sequences to them. You can send such sequences to the printer by using some word processors (even EDLIN (ugh!) if you use its <Ctrl V> feature) to make a file with embedded escape characters which you can copy to your printer. But you then need to have these files around and you have files with embedded control characters which you may have trouble printing out or sending over a modem. SEND is intended to remedy these defects of ECHO: 1. It does not terminate line in a CR-LF combination; one can add such a pair "by hand". 2. Typing "send ^G" is equivalent (except for the lack of a CR-LF) to typing "echo <Ctrl G>" so one need not fill files with control characters. 3. Typing "send ^[E > prn" will send a <Esc>E to the printer thereby turning on "emphasized" print. In addition, as will be explained, SEND supports the PROMPT $- characters. SEND: CONTROL CHARACTERS SEND works much like ECHO but if the string to be echoed includes the caret (<Shift 6> which appears as ^), different rules apply. SEND will replace ^a by the character <Ctrl A> (ASCII 1), etc. ^ followed by any letter is replaced by the corresponding control character whether the letter is upper case or lower case. The remaining control characters: ^@=ASCII 0 ^[=ASCII 27 (1B Hex)=<Esc> ^\=ASCII 28 (1C Hex) ^]=ASCII 29 (1D Hex) ^^=ASCII 30 (1E Hex) ^_=ASCII 31 (1F Hex) may be included by following a caret by the appropriate symbol. Obviously, ^[, the escape character will be used most often. If ^ is followed by any other ASCII code such as ^2 or ^? or ^*, a control character is also sent but the exact rules needn't concern us. If you wish to "send" a caret the string "$^" will have the dollar sign striped away and a caret will be sent. Thus the Documentation for SEND.COM page 3 command "send ^^a" will send the two characters <Ctrl ^> (ASCII 30) followed by a (ASCII 97) while the command "send $^^a" will send the two characters caret (ASCII 94) followed by <Ctrl A> (ASCII 1). SEND does not automatically terminate any line in a CR-LF (ASCII 13,ASCII 10) pair. Thus typing "echo hello" at the DOS command line will result in two lines on the screen before the next DOS prompt: one line saying hello and the other a blank line. Typing "send hello" will only produce the one line saying hello. If one wants the CR-LF pair, one can insert it "by hand"; thus "send hello^M^J" will have the exact same effect as "echo hello". As we will see in the next section "send hello$_" is also equivalent. It is important to remember to put in these CR-LF by hand if you are using SEND in a batch file to echo a message to the screen. For example the four line batch file echo off cls send hello send there will produce the string "hellothere" on one line on the screen while adding $_ after "hello" or even replacing the last two lines by send hello$_there will produce a two line message with one word on each line. SEND: $ LOWER CASE CHARACTERS SEND supports the $-meta string conventions of the DOS PROMPT command with one important changes (see $h below). Specifically, if a $ appears in a string following a SEND command (EXCEPTION: if the $ is immediately preceded by a caret ^$ is interpreted as <Ctrl D> unless of course its preceded by two carets...), a special interpretation is made if the $ is immediately followed by one of the following: $,^ g,l,b,q h,_,e t,d,p,v,n P,M,D,Y,T as descibed in the next section In all other cases, the $ is ignored so that "send $a" will send only "a" to the screen. "$$" and "$^" follow the same rule of stripping away the $ except that the $ and ^ are sent in their conventional meaning rather than as special symbols for SEND. The case of the letter following $ is significant. $G will be interpreted as G while $g as >. $g,$l,$b,$q correspond to the characters >,<,|,= respectively. You can use the ordinary "=" in a line starting with "send", but you CANNOT type >,< or | in such a line since DOS will interpret these symbols as redirection or piping. You must use the $-meta string instead. For example, if you use FANSI-CONSOLE and want to send the ANSI code "<esc>[>4h" typing the command "send ^[[>4h" will make a file "4h" with two bytes in it while "send ^[[$g4h" will do exactly what you want. Documentation for SEND.COM page 4 $h is equivalent to ^H, ASCII 8, the "backspace" which, if sent to the screen, moves the cursor back one space. Unlike the PROMPT $h, the SEND $h does not erase the previous character. Thus "send a$h" will show an "a" on the screen and "send a$hb" will show a "b" on the screen since the cursor will backspace one unit and the b will overwrite the a. But the command "send a$hb>file" will produce a file with three bytes: a,<Ctrl H>,b. $_ is equivalent to ^M^J, i.e. to a CR-LF pair. $e is equivalent to ^[, the escape character (ASCII 27). $t and $d send the time and date in the form returned by the TIME and DATE commands. Thus the time will appear as HH:MM:SS:hh. If you only want the hours and minutes to appear on the screen, you can type "send $t$h$h$h$h$h$h ". (There are six spaces after the final $h and they are important!). $p will send the current full pathname including the current drive such as "C:\bin\batfiles" or "C:\". $v returns the current DOS version and $n the current default drive letter without a trailing colon. SEND: $ UPPER CASE CHARATERS Send also supports a small number of extensions of the propmt meta strings: $P: For any directory but the root directory $P will send $p\; for the root directory, $P sends just \. Thus if a file has name as its filespec, "send $Pname" will always return the full path-and-filespec while "send $p\name" will only work correctly if you're not in the root directory. $T: returns the time in HHMM form so if its 9:15:37:45 AM, it will return 0915 and if its the same time PM, it will return 2115. $M: returns the month in MM form so January is 01 and December is 12. $D: returns the day in DD form so on the first, you'll get 01 and on the twentieth 20. $Y: returns the last two digits of the current year. These last four metastrings are especially useful in connection with redirection through command.com as discussed below. SEND AND ANSI.SYS One of the most useful things you can do with SEND is exploit the ANSI.SYS device driver. ANSI.SYS is a file that comes with DOS (version 2.0 and higher). You need to load it in your CONFIG.SYS file. If you already have such a file, add a line device=ansi.sys to it and place ANSI.SYS in your root directory or, even better, place ANSI.SYS in a directory, say GEORGE and add a line device=\george\ansi.sys to your CONFIG.SYS file. If you don't have such a file, add one to your root directory with one of the above lines and while you're at it, you should probably add files=20 and buffers=15 (unless the memory of your computer is very limited). You can read about the syntax of the ANSI.SYS commands in the Documentation for SEND.COM page 5 DOS 2.0 manual or the DOS 3.0 technical reference. ANSI.SYS can be used to control screen colors on a color monitor, and attributes on a monochrome monitor. For example, send $e[1;31;42m will produce an unpleasant screen while send $e[1;33;44m will be more to your liking. Actually, it is best to set your screen colors using the DOS PROMPT command. You can use SEND to call up colors and attributes for effect in batch files. The two batch files MONODEMO and COLORDEM provided illustrate this. You can also use SEND and ANSI.SYS to redefine keys in DOS. This is illustrated by KEYRD. Try the F9 and F10 keys after running KEYRD and turn off these special meanings by running KEYOFF. An article which originally appeared in the CAPITOL PC Monitor is included on the disk if you want to know more about how to use ANSI.SYS. REDIRECTION OF OUTPUT DOS, following UNIX, supports two virtual devices called "standard input" (stdin) and "standard output" (stdout). Programs rather than sending their output to a specific device like the screen or printer can send them to stdout and similarly rather than take input from a specific device, they can take it from stdin. If not specified otherwise, stdout is sent to the currently active screen and stdout is taken from the keyboard (i.e. the DOS command line). However, one can redirect stdout to another device. For this to work the program MUST send its output to stdout. For example, the "main output" of the COPY command goes not to stdout but to the second file specified on the command line; only the message that COPY sends goes to stdout. Thus "copy send.doc prn" will print this file on your printer, but "copy send.doc > prn" will print the error message File cannot be copied onto itself 0 File(s) copied If a program takes its input from stdin, that too can be redirected. One redirects output using the symbol ">" and input using "<". SEND sends its output to stdout and that can be redirected, for example to a printer or file. It takes its input from the keyboard rather than from stdin so one cannot redirect input. SENDING PRINTER CONTROLS SEND can also be used for sending control sequences to your printer. Unfortunately, the sequences to be used tend to be highly dependent on the brand and/or model of your printer. The PRINTDEM batch file included and the examples presented here work for the IBM graphics printer and compatibles. You may need to figure out Documentation for SEND.COM page 6 how to modify things to handle your own printer. The simplest example is a one line batch file entitled tf.bat send ^L> prn Typing tf at the DOS command line will cause your printer to eject a page. You might even want to define a function key to mean tf. A more sophisticated example is the five line batch file BOLDPRN.BAT, provided as a sample file: echo off cls send $eE$eG>prn copy %1 prn send $eF$eH>prn Thus typing "boldprn MYFILE" will print a boldface (=emphasized and doublestrike) copy of myfile on your printer. You might consider adding the line: send $P%1 printed on $d>prn before the "copy..." line. Other examples can be found in the PRINTDEM batch file. A particularly useful way of sending printer codes is to use send in CED synonyms if you have the program CED. ECHO, SEND AND PARAMETERS If you have a batch file called foo.bat and type the command foo hello at the DOS command line, hello is treated by DOS as the first parameter, denoted %1. Thus the line "echo %1 there" in the batch file will type the phrase "hello there" on the screen. Since this is a DOS service, "send %1 there" will work the same way. DOS makes the replacement before the line in the batch file is processed. USING BOTH ECHO AND SEND There is no reason not to use both ECHO and SEND on different lines of batch files. In the demonstration files we only used SEND, but if one doesn't need the special features of SEND, it is more convenient to use ECHO and not have to worry about inserting the CR-LF pairs by hand. REDIRECTING SEND THROUGH COMMAND.COM If you use SEND for a while, you will wish you could send its output to the command line rather than just to the screen. That is typing "send ren myfile file$M$D" on December 15, will echo "ren myfile fill1215" on the screen but will not issue that command to DOS. One can use DOS's pipe facility to issue such commands to DOS but some care is needed. If not done exactly right, your system will hang although the only effect will be the need to reboot. One can make a new "shell" of DOS by issuing the command "command" if the DOS file COMMAND.COM is in the current directory or in your DOS search path. This new shell remains resident until Documentation for SEND.COM page 7 the command "exit" is issued. To explain the care needed consider some examples. Unless you like rebooting, don't actually try these examples out! If you type "send cls|command" at the DOS command line, the letters "cls" will appear on your screen after the copyright for the appropriate version of DOS. However, when you try to push the <Enter> key nothing will happen. You told the new command.com to take its input from the output of SEND and it stubbornly won't take any from you; the only keystroke to which it will respond is the one requiring three fingers! So you might try, "send cls$_|command". This will work in the sense that your screen will clear but after that, the system will hang. The correct thing to do is "send cls$_exit$_|command". This will clear the screen and unload the new shell of command.com returning control to you. So the moral is whenever piping send's output through COMMAND.COM you should be sure that the end of the string in "send 'string'|command" is "$_exit$_" Of course, you'd never use this redirection to clear the screen. Here are two possible uses. You might make a batch file called return.bat with the single line: send %1 %2$_$n:$_cd $p$_exit$_|command Thus, if you have a batch file lotus.bat which switches to the directory with 123 and runs it, typing "return lotus" will run lotus.bat and then return you to the drive and directory that you started on. You needn't worry that having told COMMAND.COM to only accept input from the output of SEND, your keyboard will be locked up when you try to communicate with 123. COMMAND.COM will not accept input from the keyboard, but it has loaded 123 which is configured to take input from the keyboard. However, if you run a program with return.bat that tries to issue commands to DOS, it may not work. Mind you, there will be no problem with the program using DOS services as it might in saving a file. Here is another use. Suppose that your communication program captures input into a file named "temp" by default. You want to make a batch file which collects your electronic mail and stores it in a file whose name is stamped with today's date. Include the line send ren temp mail$M$D.$Y $_exit$_|command in the file and things will work exactly as you wish. In this last example, it is important to mention that when you exit an extra shell of DOS, it returns control to the calling program, even if the calling program is a batch file. Thus the above line will work fine even in the middle of a batch file. Two warnigs: NEVER load a program that becomes permanently resident in the string you send to COMMAND.COM. You will then be unable to exit the new DOS shell and your system will hang. Do not try to change environmental variables (path, prompt, etc.) with the command string. Nothing bad will happen but the change will only take effect in the new shell and when it is exited, the changes will be lost. Documentation for SEND.COM page 8 SUMMARY SEND works just like the ECHO command in DOS (including the fact that its output but not its input can be redirected) except: 1. CR-LF pairs are not automatically inserted at the end of each line but must be inserted (either as $_ or as ^M^J) at any desired point. 2. ^ and $ are not interpreted in the usual way but have special meanings; "$$" will be interpreted as "$" and "$^" as "^". 3. ^ followed by any letter (upper or lower case) or the other appropriate symbols (@,[,\,^,_) are interpreted as the corresponding control characters. In particular, ^[ will send an <Esc> (ASCII 27). It is better not to follow ^ by any other symbol. 4. $ followed by ^,P,M,D,Y,T or any of the PROMPT meta characters ($,t,d,p,v,n,g,l,b,q,h,e,_) has the meaning given in the DOS manual description of the PROMPT. $^ gives a literal ^ and $P means the same a $p in the root directory and the same as $p\ in any other directory. $h does not have the PROMPT meaning of backspace AND ERASE but only means backspace, i.e. <Ctrl H> (ASCII 8). In particular, $e will send an <Esc> (ASCII 27) and $_ a CR- LF pair. $M,$D,$Y return two digits for the month, day and year. $T returns the four digits HHMM in the time. HISTORY Version 1.0 10-15-85 Version 1.5 12-05-85 Added $M,D,Y,T commands and added to the documentation the possibility of piping send throungh COMMAND.COM Version 1.6 01-03-86 Modified send to work properly with XCED, a part of the PCED package. Previously, send assumed it command input ended with a CR which DOS automatically inserts at the end of command lines. Now send ends its input when it reaches a NULL (ASCII 0) or the number of characters specified by DOS for the input, whichever comes first. Documentation for SEND.COM page 9