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- QB_OBJ.DOC
-
- MicroSoft is a company whose products I trust and use intensively. But the
- people who work there have this infuriating habit of giving us EXACTLY what
- they advertise, and NO MORE, even when that 'more' is so obviously required.
-
- Two good cases in point are the LIB utility that comes with their Macro-
- Assembler and the BUILDLIB utility that comes with their QuickBasic. They both
- suffer from the same deficiency, namely that extracting or building from or to
- .LIB or .EXE or .OBJ files is, to put it mildy, a PAIN IN THE NECK ( not to
- name another part of the anatomy ).
-
- Let's see what happens when you purchase their magnificent ( no kidding )
- QuickBasic compiler. You have been using another BASIC compiler for years and
- have built-up a gigantic .LIB file containing something like 100 of your
- favorite .OBJ files. In order to use QuickBasic's excellent 'real-time' debug-
- ging facilities, you have to use extract all the .OBJ files from your .LIB file
- MANUALLY and then use BUILDLIB.EXE to manualy incorporate them into USERLIB.EXE
-
- This process can easily take a few hours and is very error-prone. But what
- REALLY galls me is that whenever you wish to add ONE stupid .OBJ file to
- USERLIB.EXE, you must start the WHOLE process ALL OVER AGAIN FROM THE VERY
- START ! This also applies if you make ONE mistake. I know it sounds incredi-
- ble, but there it is ... What can I say ?
-
- SOLUTION:
-
- This package contains three interactive utilities that are intended to
- facilitate the whole process. All were written in BASIC and compiled with the
- IBM BASIC Compiler version 2.0 (written by MicroSoft) :
-
- 1-) LIB2OBJ.EXE will extract ***ALL*** the .OBJ files from a .LIB file.
- 2-) OBJ2LIB.EXE will ADD ***ALL*** the .OBJ files in the default sub-
- directory to the .LIB file of your choice.
- 3-) OBJ2EXE.EXE will incorporate ( NOT add ) ***ALL*** the .OBJ files in the
- default sub-directory to the USERLIB of your choice.
-
- REQUIREMENTS:
-
- 1-) 128k of FREE memory . (conservative, may work with less.)
- 2-) DOS 3.0 or better. (DOS 2.0 MAY work.)
- 3-) LIB.EXE and BUILDLIB.EXE either in the current sub-directory or within
- your PATH.
-
- WISH LIST:
-
- 1-) EXE2OBJ.EXE : My knowledge of the way in which BUILDLIB.EXE works is not
- THAT good. In effect, that would be a sort of disassembler.
- 2-) OBJ3ASM.EXE : Hasn't this happened to you ? You painstakingly write a
- .ASM routine, create a .OBJ file from it and then loose or accidentaly
- destroy the .ASM file. This is frustrating because you still have a
- usable .OBJ file but you are unable to improve on it, short of re-
- writting the .ASM file.
-
- Does anybody know if such utilities exist or CAN exist ? I'm aware that
- writting them is quite a challenge, much more so that the ones that are
- included here and which I am hereby giving to the public domain.
-
- Enjoy !
-
- 15th of March, 1987
-
- Raymond Paquin, professeur,
- UQAH
- Departement d'administration
- Universite du Quebec a Hull
- Boul. Alexandre-Tache
- Hull, P.Q.
- Canada
-
- You may also reach me by MODEM at any one of the following BBS's.
-
- - Code_Con (613) 224-4480 (2400 baud)
- - CompuCenter (613) 230-7154 (1200 baud)
- - Data/SF Net (613) 726-1100 (1200 baud)
- - Eaton's (613) 234-5488 (1200 baud)
- - Heath (613) 728-4661 (2400 baud)
- - Source Code Central (613) 738-1793 (1200 baud)
- - Sperry (613) 737-6058 (2400 baud)
- - TV Profs (613) 236-1730 (2400 baud)
- - The Bureau (613) 745-8015 (2400 baud)
- - The Missing Link (613) 731-2945 (1200 baud)
- - Crypto (703) 237-4322 (2400 baud)
- - Hacker's Haven (801) 224-4031 (2400 baud)
- - Programmer's ToolBox 1 (301) 540-7230 (2400 baud)
- - PCanada (416) 751-6337 (2400 baud) My ID there is PC1260
- - SoftWare Society (201) 729-7410 (2400 baud)
- - Boss BBS (201) 568-7293 (2400 baud)
- - Bob Blacher BBS (202) 547-2008 (2400 baud)
- - Rich Schinnel BBS (301) 949-8848 (2400 baud)
- - Ron Fox BBS (312) 940-6496 (2400 baud)
- - Howard Ekman's BBS (612) 623-0152 (2400 baud)
- - Fargo ND BBS (701) 293-5973 (2400 baud)