ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 Shareware Freeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)

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Text File | 1991-03-14 | 23.0 KB | 664 lines

This set of programs was done to 'work' data files allowing the partial selection of the data with different criterions. You can test it by free but if you keep using it you must register as user. If you develop systems for third parties you can also integrate it within your own application but you must register the number of copies your client will use, for more than 5 copies installed at a single company ask for quantity discounts. Registered users will be notified of bug reports, workarounds, and release of new versions. Single copy registration fee: $ 50 USD The programs included are the following: Modify Allows insertions and deletions of 'columns' (the same positions of every record of the file) as convertions to upper or lowercase, trimming (elimination of leading and/or trailing spaces) and elimination of supplementary spaces (all con- secutive spaces in the input are left as one space in the output). Fields Instead of seeing the file as a set of columns this program sees it as a set of fields separated by arbitrary delimiters. You may select the set of delimiters to be used and a subset of fields to send the output. You also can convert the fields to fixed length, in such case the fields will be truncated or padded with spaces at the right. As in 'Modify' you can convert to upper or lower case and eliminate identical consecutive records. Head With this program you can send to the output only the first n lines of a file. Tail This program send to the output the last n lines of a file or all the lines but the n first ones. 1 Lines With this one you can select the lines to send to the output the lines that acomplish certain condi- tions as a) Contains (or not) some literal, b) All lines after the first one containing some literal. c) All lines until one that contains some literal. The literals can be expressed in a few forms as: the first word in the line, the last one or anyone, you can also specify that the word must begin, end or contain a set of consecutive charac- ters and the search may be case sensitive or in- sensitive. Every time the programs ran check themselves to prevent con- tamination originated on virus, disk errors, etc. This can take a few seconds but I hope you will appreciate this little loss of performance in change of increased security. The programs can reside in any directory you may want but they must not be renamed as the name is included in the self-checking procedure. The programs have a common interface so the parameter han- dling is the same for all programs. Following is a little explanation about that common interface. In general a command line should be in the form: progname -{a|b} [-c:12,<literal>] [<]InpFile [[>]OutFile] progname without any parameter will display the help screen. Parameters or symbols enclosed in square brackets [..] are optional. Parameters or symbols enclosed in square brackets {..} are mandatory but you must select one of the options separated by commas or vertical bars. 2 In the above example: -{a|b} means that you must select either -a or -b [-c:12,<literal>] means that this parameter can be ommited, if you use it you must replace <literal> with a literal (see below the sintax for literals). [<]InpFile means that InpFile must be present, you must re- place InpFile with the file name you want to use. The [<] part means that the < can be used to redirect the file. [[>]OutFile] means that the OutFile can be ommited, in such case the output will be sent to the screen. If OutFile is present you can use the > to redirect the file. For more details about the files see the FILES section below. PROGRAM PARAMETERS Parameters or switches start with a dash '-' wich is inter- changeable with a slash '/'. Parameters must be separated between them but at least one space and can't be 'stacked'. What I mean is that -a -b isn't the same that -ab as used in some programs. Sometimes a plus sign '+' is used to invert the significance of the parameter. i.e.: -n is used to indicate the program 'Tail' the number of lines (counted from the end of the file) to send to the output, while using +n instead of -n means send all file but the first n lines. The letter(s) that identify the parameters can be upper or lower case so /n -n -N and /N have the same meaning for the program. Some parameters, like -i, to insert characters, or -lf, to specify the file to be used for logging, have sub- parameters. The colon ':' or the equal sign '=' can be used 3 to separate the parameter 'name' from the data, the comma ',' is used as separator when the data consists of more than one item. RANGES Sometimes is needed to indicate a range as in 'positions 10 to 13' this can be expressed as 10;13 or 10/13; in some cases you may want to say something like '4 characters starting on position 10', this could be expressed as 10,4 or 10:4 and it's equivalent to the previous example. All forms are interchangeable, you may use that fitting better your needs. LITERALS Some parameters requires literals, those must be enclosed between a pair of delimiters. The character used as delimiter must not be contained in the literal. The pairs of delimiters allowed are the following: (..) brackets [..] square brackets {..} curly brackets '..' right quotes (apostrophes) ".." double quotes If it's necessary to include control characters in a literal this can be done in two ways: ^A and #001 will produce the same result because the internal representation of the Control-A is a byte with a decimal value of 1. While processing the string the program interprets the ^x (being x any character in the range @ to Del) and replaces the caret '^' and the character to its right by the corresponding value. To indicate a special character in the #ddd form the # must be followed by exactly 3 digits in the range 000 to 255, in such case the four characters will be replaced by a single one with the desired value. 4 You must be careful using the following characters: angle brackets: < and > and vertical bar: | Any of these characters will be interpreted by the DOS as an instruction to redirect a file. To prevent it you must re- place it with its decimal representation: < = #060 > = #062 and | = #124 The reverse slash \ is used by the programs as 'escape character' to eliminate the special significance of the caret ^, the numeral # and the reverse slash \ itself. So if you want to include a # in a string you must escape it by preceding it with a reverse slash, i.e.: #000 will result in a byte with all bits in zero but \#000 will left a # fol- lowed by three ASCII zeros. \^A will result in a caret fol- lowed by a letter A but \\^A will result in a reverse slash followed by a byte with the value of the Ctl-A. Another characters that may confuse the program if included in literals are the slash / and the dash - but only when are preceded by a space because this configuration will be in- terpreted as a parameter. In this cases you can escape the slash or dash with the reverse slash, so instead of ".. /.." would be better to use ".. \/.." or "..#032/..". FILES Input [<]InputFile means that the input file can be redirected or piped from another program or named but must be present, i.e. < FileName or FileName are both valid options. The only case where you don't need to put the InputFile is when you are piping in the output of another program by using the | before the program name. In general input from the keyboard is not allowed. Output You may use the > to redirect the output to any file, port (COMx, LPTx), the standard printer (PRN), the screen (CON) or even to the bit bucket (NUL). [[>]OutputFile] means that the output can be: 5 redirected to a file as in > FileName, appended to a file as in >> FileName, piped to another program as in | Prog2, named as in FileName or ommited at all to send the output to the screen. You can pipe to the InpFile of this program the OutFile of a previous one and/or the OutFile of this program to the InpFile of the next one in the pipe. i.e.: FirstProg | ThisProg | LastProg For more details please, read the DOS manual. Logging (Statistics and Errors) The program headers and statistics are ever sent to the screen independently of where the output is directed. This info can be redirected to a file, there a special parameter intended to do that: -lf:LogFile you must replace LogFile with any file name you may want to use, included NUL. The file will not be overwritten, all info sent will be appended to the file so if you forget to clean it time to time the file will grow up until filling your disk. Commands As some command lines can be too long some programs are able to read the parameters of the command (those starting with a dash but not the file names) from a file. To do that you must specify: -cf:CommandFile where you should replace CommandFile with any file name you want to use. The commands in that file must be arranged one by record and you can make it with any editor, with the 'COPY CON' DOS command and even could generate it with a program, in such case each command must be terminated by a <CR><LF> sequence. 6 When the program finishes you will see a report with statis- tics as follows: Input: 0 records with 0 bytes Output: 0 records with 0 bytes Time to run: 0.0 sec. ProgName finished on 1991-02-25 17:04:58 with ErrorLevel: 0 Time to time, after that report you will see a message like this one: ------------------------------------------------------------ A little reminder: If you keep using this program you MUST register! For payment instructions at the DOS prompt type ProgName -? If you already have done it THANKS! .. and excuse me for this intromission. ------------------------------------------------------------ I hope that this don't bothers you too much. 7 This is the help screen of the program Modify (sligthly reformated to fit the 60 columns of this manual) Modify.01.04 - 01/Feb/91 - (c) 1990, 1991 SoftWare Plus SA - Eduardo J. Salom usage: modify [-tl] [-tr] [-d:ccc,nnn] [-d:ccc/nnn] \ [-i:ccc,'...'] [[<]InpFile] [[>]OutFile] or: modify -cf:CmdFile [[<]InpFile] [[>]OutFile] where: -tl Trim Left = Delete heading spaces. -tr Trim Right = Delete trailing spaces. -d:c,n Delete n chars starting on position c. (the ',' can be replaced for ':') -d:c/n Delete chars from position c to position n. (the '/' can be replaced for ';') -i:c,"text" Insert text starting at position ccc. The text to be inserted can be delimited by: "..", '..', [..], (..) or {..} ^x will be replaced by Cntl-x (x can be any char from @ to _) #ddd will be replaced by the corresponding ASCII character (ddd must be exactly 3 digits in the range 000-255) To insert a '^', '#', '\' or a delimiter precede it with a '\' -lc Translate resulting data to LowerCase. -uc Translate resulting data to UpperCase. -b Change strings of consecutive blanks to one blank -u Delete line if identical to previous one (Unique). -cf File with commands as described above but one per record. NOTE: The delete/insert operations can't exceed 10. 8 This is the help screen of the program Fields (sligthly reformated to fit the 60 columns of this manual) Fields.01.02 - 01/Feb/91 - (c) 1990, 1991 SoftWare Plus SA - Eduardo J. Salom usage: fields [-d:<delims>] -f:<fields> [-uc] [-lc] [-u] \ [<]InputFile [[>]OutputFile] or: fields -cf:<CommandFile> [<]InputFile [[>]OutputFile] where: -d:<list of delimiters> A serie of characters to be used as delimiters. If this parameter is omitted the default delimiters will be the Space (#032) and the Tab (#009). To include the space or any control code you must supply its ASCII value preceded by a # sign: #ddd will be replaced by the corresponding ASCII character. ddd must be a number exactly 3 digits long in the range 000 to 255 -f:<list of fields> The individual fields or range of fields to be included, separated by commas. Range of fields are individual fields separated by a dash. -f:-3,5-7,9- will include all fields 1 to 3 (-3), 5 to 7 (5-7) and from field 9 up to the last one (9-). Each field can be followed by a : and the output field length. Fields longer than specified will be truncated, while shorter ones will be padded with spaces. *Only* for individual fields! -lc Translate resulting data to LowerCase. -uc Translate resulting data to UpperCase. -u Delete line if identical to previous one (Unique). The checking will be done after the Output line was built -cf File with commands as described above but one per record. 9 This is the help screen of the program Lines (sligthly reformated to fit the 60 columns of this manual) Lines.01.04 - 12/Feb/91 - (c) 1990, 1991 SoftWare Plus SA - Eduardo J. Salom usage: lines -s:<mask> [-i] -{f|t|o} [[<]InpFile] \ [[>]OutFile] where: -s:<mask> where <mask> can be any string without embedded blanks if preceded by ^ will look only the first word of each line if terminated in ^ will look only the last word of each line if preceded by * will look for words terminated as <mask> if terminated in * will look for words starting as <mask> To cancel the special significance of ^ or * duplicate it i.e.: -s:^Fro* means: 'look for a line where its first word starts with the characters Fro' -s: (with a null mask) will search for empty lines -i The search must be done case insensitive -f Send to output all lines once <mask> found (from) -t Send to output all lines until <mask> found (to) -o Send to output all lines where <mask> found (only) 10 This is the help screen of the program Tail (sligthly reformated to fit in 60 columns) Tail.01.02 - 23/Nov/90 - (c) 1990, 1991 SoftWare Plus SA - Eduardo J. Salom usage: tail -n [-lf:LogFile] [<]InpFile [[>]OutFile] where: n is the number of lines to send to the output file LogFile can be a file used to log the control info provided by the program. If you redirect (or pipe) the Output the control info will not be redirected along with the data. 11 This is the help screen of the program Head (sligthly reformated to fit the 60 columns of this manual) Head.01.01 - 23/Nov/90 - (c) 1990, 1991 SoftWare Plus SA - Eduardo J. Salom usage: head -n [-lf:LogFile] [<]InpFile [[>]OutFile] where: n is the number of lines to send to the output file LogFile can be a file used to log the control info provided by the program. If you redirect (or pipe) the Output the control info will not be redirected along with the data. 12 Bug reports, questions about these programs as suggestions for enhancements or for developing new programs will be wel- comed. As my native language is Spanish any correction to my English as suggestions to improve the readability to this manual will be also welcomed. You can send me e-mail to the following addresses: Internet: eduardo@swp.com.ar <== prefered or eduardo@m2xenix.psg.com UUCP: ..!uunet!swp.com.ar!eduardo <== prefered or ..!uunet!m2xenix!eduardo CompuServe: [73000,74] BIX: swp Delphi: SWP or AIR MAIL (surface mail will took 2 to 3 months) to Eduardo J. Salom SoftWare Plus SA Larrea 1218 - 2.A (1117) Buenos Aires, CFE Argentina The main and only activity of my company (SoftWare Plus) is the software development, our earnings depends of our sales, we believe that the shareware is a great idea as the user can test the product before paying for it saving, at the same time, the big chunk spent in advertising, packaging and distribution (about 70% of the retail price of a commercial product) So, if you find this program, or any other shareware, useful and keep using it please, register as user an pay for it, otherwise the shareware will starve and dissapear. Think that the few bucks I request will pay only for a very little fraction of the time spent to make this program. Thanks for you attention! Eduardo J. Salom 13