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Led's Change Directory v2.0 Released Dec 1, 1990 A PC-DOS / MS-DOS Fast Directory Changer _______ ____|__ | (tm) --| | |------------------- | ____|__ | Association of | | |_| Shareware |__| o | Professionals -----| | |--------------------- |___|___| MEMBER Written by Keith Ledbetter 4240 Ketcham Drive Chesterfield, VA 23832 (804) 674-0780 (6:00pm - 10:00pm Eastern Time) Electronic mail on GEnie : ORION.MICRO CompuServe: 72240,1221 Program and Documentation are Copyright (c) 1990 by Keith Ledbetter. All rights reserved. Portions Copyright Borland, International. LCD was written with Turbo C++. 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. LCD Registration Form Keith Ledbetter 4240 Ketcham Drive Chesterfield, VA 23832 LCD Version 2.0x Quantity Price Disk with branding utility ($15/copy): _______ __________ Total enclosed __________ Please make payment by check or money order (in US funds) payable to "Keith Ledbetter". Please specify the diskette size(s) that are acceptable for you: ___ 5.25" 1.2MB ___ 3.5" 1.44MB ___ 5.25" 360KB ___ 3.50" 720KB Name ________________________________________________________ Company ________________________________________________________ Address ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ Phone ________________________________________________________ Where did you get LCD? _________________________________________ Multi-System and Reseller Licenses: Site, corporate, network, and reseller licenses are available for LCD. Check the line on the order form or contact me for more information. The following schedule provides some examples of multi-system license fees. The fee includes one master diskette which you may then copy and use on the number of machines listed below: # Users Price ------- ------- 5 $ 70.00 ($14 / copy) 10 130.00 ($13 / copy) 25 300.00 ($12 / copy) 50 550.00 ($11 / copy) 100 1,000.00 ($10 / copy) Unlimited 1,500.00 Led's Change Directory Page 1 Definition of ShareWare Shareware distribution gives users a chance to try software before buying it. If you try a Shareware program and continue using it, you are expected to register. Individual programs differ on details -- some request registration while others require it, some specify a maximum trial period. With registration, you get anything from the simple right to continue using the software to an updated program with printed manual. Copyright laws apply to both Shareware and commercial software, and the copyright holder retains all rights, with a few specific exceptions as stated below. Shareware authors are accomplished programmers, just like commercial authors, and the programs are of comparable quality. (In both cases, there are good programs and bad ones!) The main difference is in the method of distribution. The author specifically grants the right to copy and distribute the software, either to all and sundry or to a specific group. For example, some authors require written permission before a commercial disk vendor may copy their Shareware. Shareware is a distribution method, not a type of software. You should find software that suits your needs and pocketbook, whether it's commercial or Shareware. The Shareware system makes fitting your needs easier, because you can try before you buy. And because the overhead is low, prices are low also. Shareware has the ultimate money-back guarantee -- if you don't use the product, you don't pay for it. Led's Change Directory Page 2 Disclaimer - Agreement Users of LCD must accept this disclaimer of warranty: "LCD is supplied as is. The author disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability and of fitness for any purpose. The author assumes no liability for damages, direct or conse- quential, which may result from the use of LCD." LCD is a "shareware program" and is provided at no charge to the user for evaluation. Feel free to share it with your friends, but please do not give it away altered or as part of another system. The essence of "user-supported" software is to provide personal computer users with quality software without high prices, and yet to provide incentive for programmers to continue to develop new products. If you find this program useful and find that you are using LCD and continue to use LCD after a reasonable trial period, you must make a reg- istration payment of $15 to Keith Ledbetter. The $15 registration fee will license one copy for use on any one computer at any one time. You must treat this software just like a book. An example is that this software may be used by any number of people and may be freely moved from one computer location to another, so long as there is no possibility of it being used at one location while it's being used at another. Just as a book cannot be read by two different persons at the same time. Commercial users of LCD must register and pay for their copies of LCD within 30 days of first use or their license is withdrawn. Site-License arrangements may be made by con- tacting Keith Ledbetter. Anyone distributing LCD for any kind of remuneration must first contact Keith Ledbetter at the address below for authorization. This authorization will be automatically granted to distributors recognized by the (ASP) as adhering to its guidelines for shareware distributors, and such distributors may begin offering LCD immediately (However Keith Ledbetter must still be advised so that the distributor can be kept up-to-date with the latest version of LCD.). You are encouraged to pass a copy of LCD along to your friends for evaluation. Please encourage them to register their copy if they find that they can use it. All registered users will receive a copy of the latest version of the LCD system. Led's Change Directory Page 3 About the Program LCD is a program designed to make changing directories much easier, especially when you have a large hard drive with lots of different partitions. LCD is a work-alike to Peter Norton's NCD command, but with one significant difference. LCD works "across all drives" by maintaining the directory database of ALL drives on drive C:, instead of one database on each individual drive like NCD does. This means that you don't have to specify a drive letter when changing across drives, like you do with NCD. About the Syntax: LCD partial_directory_name : change to a directory LCD md directory_name : create directory; update database now LCD rd directory_name : delete directory; update database now LCD /scan [drivelist] : scan drives and build directory database LCD /escan [drivelist] : scan drives (see directories with extensions) Changing directories: LCD is used to quickly switch between directories across any of your hard drives. You simply invoke LCD and give it the full or partial name of the directory you wish to change to. For example, if you have a directory named C:\PROCOMM\DOWNLOADS, you could switch to this directory with the command: C:> LCD down LCD will first try to do an immediate change to the directory name that you specify. If that change works, LCD simply exits immediately. If it fails, then LCD looks into your directory database and tries to figure out the directory name that you wanted by doing fuzzy comparisons. If more than one directory existed with the same partial name that you gave to LCD, it will display a scrollable dialog box on the screen containing all of the matches found. Simply use the arrow keys to highlight the path that you want to change to, then hit <Enter>. Scanning directories: The first time you execute LCD, you must specify the /SCAN parameter ("LCD /scan") which instructs LCD to scan all of your hard drives and build a file called LCD.IDX in the root directory of drive C. You will need to periodically rescan all of your drives to add to the table any new directories that you have created. Led's Change Directory Page 4 About the Program If you only want LCD to know about certain specific drives (ie: only non-network drives), you can specify a drive list after the /SCAN keyword. To have LCD only scan drives C, E, F, and G, you'd do this: C:> LCD /SCAN CEFG If you have subdirectories which have an extension in their name (for example, C:\PROGRAMS.OLD\) then you must specify /ESCAN instead of /SCAN. This causes LCD to see those directories, but the scan time will be almost 50% slower. Direct database updating: You can also use LCD to create and remove directories with immediate database updating. This means that you don't have to continually scan your drives to update the directory database. LCD will create or delete the directory specified, and then update the LCD.IDX database at the same time. For example, to create a directory on drive F: and put that directory in the database, you'd do: C:> LCD md f:\test This ability comes in especially handy for users of command shells that allow aliasing, such as CED and 4DOS. With these utilities, you can change the standard MD and RD commands to invoke LCD instead. With 4DOS, you'd set up the aliases like this: C:> alias md `lcd md %1` C:> alias rd `lcd rd %1` C:> alias cd `lcd %1` The LCD environment variable: If you'd rather have LCD keep its LCD.IDX database somewhere other than the root directory of drive C:, you can specify the drive you want used in the LCD environment variable. For example, if you'd rather keep the LCD.IDX file on drive D:, you should put "SET LCD=D" in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Led's Change Directory Page 5 About the Program Bulletin Board Numbers: You can always find the latest versions of all of my PC utilities (such as WhereIs, LCD, DelDir, AdMenu, etc.) on the following BBS's: Name Location Number ------------------ ---------- ------------ Blue Ridge Express East coast 804-790-1675 (21 lines) Hard Disk Cafe Midwest 618-684-3990 (file area "Z") C & C Midwest 618-253-3608 ATT-PAC West coast 415-829-6062 Led's Change Directory Page 6 Revision History v2.0 12/01/90 o Simply an oversight: v1.4 would update the directory database if you used LCD to create a directory on drive A: or B:. LCD no longer updates the directory database if you use it to make or remove a directory on these drives (this was probably only apparent to those of us who "alias" MD and RD to use LCD.EXE). v1.5 - v1.9 o These version numbers were skipped. v1.4 11/24/90 o LCD can now be used as a TOTAL replacement for DOS's "cd", "rd", and "md" commands. LCD will now try to immediately change to the directory name that you specify; if that fails, only then will it go to the directory database to search for fuzzy matches. In other words, if you have the following two directories somewhere: C:\TELIX\DOWNLOAD C:\PROCOMM\DOWNLOAD and you are currently in the C:\PROCOMM directory, then "LCD download" will change you to the \PROCOMM\DOWNLOAD directory without invoking the dialog box. o LCD can now create and delete directories itself, with immediate updating of the directory database at the same time. The syntax is: LCD md directory_name LCD rd directory_name These commands are most useful when used with an aliasing shell like CED or 4DOS. Since I use 4DOS, I have aliases set up as follows: alias cd `lcd %1` alias md `lcd md %1` alias rd `lcd rd %1` o You can now set an environment variable named LCD to the drive that you'd like your LCD.IDX file stored on (for example, SET LCD=D tells LCD to maintain your database in the file D:\LCD.IDX). If there is no LCD environment variable, the file will be kept on drive C: just like before. o When in the scrollable dialog box, you now have use of the full movement keys (PgUp, PgDn, Home, End, arrow keys). You can also press C through Z to immediately go to that drive's directories. This is most useful when doing "LCD *" to see all names in the database. Led's Change Directory Page 7 Revision History v1.3 10/15/90 o Fixed a bug where LCD would get confused if you had a one-letter directory name, and that letter also occurred in its parent directory (ie: "c:\aRc\R"). o Of course, the above change can be a problem if (a) you have a one-character directory name, as in R, and you also have a lot of other directories that begin with R. So, I have changed LCD so that it understands an asterisk ('*') as a wildcard character. Some examples are the easiest way to explain: LCD r* : find all paths that BEGIN with the letter 'r'. LCD *on : find all paths that have the word "on" in them. LCD * : show me all paths in the database. o A few people wanted to be able to change to either (a) the parent directory, or (b) the root directory while still using LCD. LCD will now allow this, so you can do: LCD .. ;go up one level LCD \ ;go to the root. v1.2 10/11/90 o A lot of people (in fact, everyone who has contacted me) have suggested that LCD should give the highest priority to the first positions of the pathname specified. In other words, if you have the following two paths on your hard drive: c:\testing\programs c:\atest\data then "LCD TEST" should change to the \testing\ directory immediately. v1.2 now does this. o Overall, the matching logic in v1.2 has been greatly improved. It now does a much better job of figuring out what you really wanted it to do. But, it will probably help if you know exactly how LCD does it's searching. In a nutshell, here is what LCD does: 1. Look for an EXACT match on the directory name specified. If more than one found, display the dialog box. If none found, go to step 2. 2. Look for a "fuzzy" match on the name. By LCD's standards, a fuzzy match is the name you specified followed by any extra data. For example, if you specify "LCD data", then all Led's Change Directory Page 8 Revision History of the following would match: c:\data1 c:\database f:\dataset If more than one match found, display the dialog box. If none found, go to step 3. 3. At this point, LCD just looks for the partial string anywhere in a path name, preceeded or followed by any characters. o Since so very few people use extensions on their directory names, I changed the logic to once again use "*." for directory searches instead of "*.*". This speeds the /SCAN function up by about 50%. If you have directory names with extensions on them, then you must use the /ESCAN switch instead of /SCAN. Operation is the same, except that LCD will then use the slower scanning method. v1.1 10/04/90 o Since the .IDX file is stored a little differently, you MUST do a /SCAN before using LCD v1.1 (this is for those of you currently using v1.0). o LCD is now much smarter on "fuzzy" directory names. For example, "lcd pcp" will now change you to your "d:\pcplus" directory always, even if you have "pcplus\downloads" and "pcplus\uploads", etc. o When LCD can't figure out which directory you really want, it will now pop up a scrollable dialog box with all of the matches found in it. You simply move the highlight bar to the directory that you want, and then press <Enter>. A lot of people requested something like this, and I wasn't sure how I was going to like it at first. But, after playing with it for a couple of days, I think it was a good idea. It's much more logical than LCD trying to "cycle" through all of the matches one invocation at a time. o A few people also complained about LCD not seeing directories that have an extension on them (ie: MYDATA.DIR). I still can't sneak by anybody on this issue! So, LCD v1.1 now sees directories with extensions; you will notice that the /SCAN function takes around twice as long to run now. End of document.