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DATES Edit Dates/Times into a Command Line & Execute It. Release 2a - March 1992 Copyright (C) 1990-1992 by Graham Stair Introduction DATES is an enhanced replacement to Ben Bakers DAYNBR. It came about because I needed to put more than just the Julian day in my command line, and I needed it in the OS/2 environment as well as the DOS environment. DATES enhancements over DAYNBR are... It passes the return code back from the command line. It has extra date and time edit strings. Distributed with versions to run under OS/2 or DOS. Uses the COMSPEC environment variable. Logs elapsed time, return code and command line. License Information DATES is a FREELY AVAILABLE package, available along similar lines as BinkleyTerm and it's source. If you would like the source code to DATES, please contact me. The source is free and ONLY available DIRECT from me at your cost. DATES and it's source code are NOT public domain, you can NOT make changed copies available for anybody else without my permission. Any source changes should be re-directed back to me for possible use in future versions of DATES. Please contact me data at ... 3:711/409.0 +61-2-498-9184 or snail mail at ... Graham Stair P.O.Box 99 Pymble NSW 2073 Australia Table of Contents INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 LICENSE INFORMATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 PACKAGING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 USAGE: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Explanation of {options}. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Edit strings in COMMAND {parameters} . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Date replacements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Time replacements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Miscellaneous replacements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 EXAMPLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 COMPATIBILITY WITH DAYNBR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Incompatibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Enhanced Incompatibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 OTHER PROGRAM OFFERINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 HISTORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Packaging The following files should be in your DATESxx archive. DATES-R.EXE DOS Real mode version of DATES. DATES-P.EXE OS/2 Protected mode version of DATES. DATES.DOC This documentation. Usage: DATES {options} COMMAND {parameters} Explanation of {options}. /+nnn Add <nnn> days to the reference date. /-nnn Subtract <nnn> days from the reference date. <nnn> may be any decimal number from 0 to 32 thousand something. Although in practice the dates are limited to the range 1st Jan 1980 to 18th Jan 2038. /Dn Select a specific day <n>. <n> is a single digit which selects a specific day on or prior to the reference date. The digits are as follows... 0 .. Sunday 1 .. Monday 2 .. Tuesday 3 .. Wednesday 4 .. Thursday 5 .. Friday 6 .. Saturday The reference date starts out as the system date. Multiple {options} can appear and are processed left to right, each modifying the previous reference date in it's own way. /F<file> Set the reference date to the <file>s date. This allows the reference date to be modified to a particular files date/time. /C Force use of COMSPEC environment variable. This option forces DATES to invoke the COMMAND by directly calling the operating systems command processor (pointed to by the COMSPEC environment variable). If this option isn't used, DATES first tries to execute COMMAND by by-passing the command processor. If the COMMAND isn't executed correctly, it then uses the command processor. You would use this option in the cases where DATES does not execute the command correctly without going through the command processor. Note, this option takes additional memory as the command processor is being loaded no matter what. /Jc Override DATES edit character to <c>. This lets DATES use any character as the edit character in place of ` code. Some command processors (4DOS) and/or environments (DESQVIEW) use the default edit character, this is one way to use DATES within these environments. /L<file> Send log information to <file>. This will override the environment variable, so any log information can be written directly to <file>. /Q Quiet mode. This suppresses the copyright information displayed when DATES is run, allowing a clutter free screen. /R Force reported return code to zero. Unconditionally set the returned code reported to the log to zero. This does not change the actual return code reported to the operating system. /In Ignore return code <n> as an error. When a return of <n> is returned by the sub-process, do NOT put an exclamation (!) in the log. If the return code is <n>, DATES will put a hash (#) instead. This is so any programs that report on the log and looks for an exclamation as an error, won't report <n> as an error. Up to ten separate /I's can be used at once. /Pp Run the sub-process at priority <p>. This is an OS/2 ONLY facility. This will run the sub-process at one of the four possible priority levels <p> within OS/2. The levels are.. i : Idle (slowest) r : Regular (default) f : Fixed-High t : Time-Critical (fastest) /V Verbose log. This will log the starting date/time of a command and the command being executed to the log. /? Help screen. These options can be preceded with either a slash (/) or a dash (-). This means that you could have two dashes in a row, this is OK. For example the option /-100 could also be used as --100. Edit strings in COMMAND {parameters} COMMAND {parameters} is any string with DATES edit strings, which after replacement is converted to a valid operating system command. The COMMAND and {parameters} can contain the following edit strings. These edit strings will be replaced with the date and time information of the reference date as indicated here, then the new COMMAND {parameters} will be passed to the operating system for execution. The default edit code, ` (ASCII 096), and it's one character identifier (of which the case is irrelevant), are not moved to the new COMMAND line. Each of the hashes (#) are converted and take up exactly one spot in the final COMMAND line. They are zero filled on the left if need be. The at symbol (@), can be used in place of the `0 for the Julian date only. Date replacements `0### or @### Julian day of the year (000 - 366). `1#### Year, including century (1980 - 2038). `2## Year, excluding century (80 - 38). `3## Month (01 - 12). `4### First 3 characters of the month name (JAN .. DEC). `5## Day of month (01 - 31). `6### First 3 characters of the day name. Time replacements `A## System hour (00 - 23). `B## System minute (00 - 59). `C## System seconds (00 - 59). `D##### System seconds since midnight (00000 - 86400). `E######## Seconds since midnight of 1st of Jan of the reference year (00000000 - 31622400). Miscellaneous replacements `H# The half of the year (1 or 2). `Q# The quarter of the year (1 - 4). `T# The Third of the year (1 - 3). `S# The sixth of the year (1 - 6). `W## The week of the year (1 - 53). If you want to use the edit character ` (ASCII 096, 0x60) or @ without it being interpreted as an edit string, put two of them together (I.E. `` or @@). Any non #'s in any of the edit strings, in any position, will NOT be replaced. The /+nnn, /-nnn and /Dn options will not affect the `A, `B, `C, and `D edit strings, as these are relative to midnight of the system date and thus don't change when a day changes. First DATES tries to execute your modified COMMAND by using normal operating system procedures to find the command. I.E. looking in the current directory and then checking down the paths in the PATH environment variable. If the COMMAND is not found, DATES tries to execute it once again by pre-pending the COMSPEC environment variable to the command and running that. If the command is still not found or the COMSPEC variable isn't declared then an error is produced. Environment Variables DATES uses up to two environment variables. They are.. COMSPEC This points to your command processor, and is required to be set. Only the FIRST of the following environment variables will be used. Each points to a log filename. If one of these is defined, one line containing the elapsed time (et), return code (rc) and command line (cl) executed is logged to the file. If none are define, no logging is done. DATES.LOG {drive}{path}filename{.ext} OPUS.LOG {drive}{path}filename{.ext} BBS.LOG {drive}{path}filename{.ext} The {drive}, {path} and {.ext} are optional. If you leave out {drive} and {path}, remember, your COMMAND line may change the current drive and/or directory, thus leaving filename's created all over your disk(s). This log file can be overridden by using the /L option explained above. Examples DATES ECHO `0### ..or.. DATES ECHO @### This will echo the current Julian day of the year to the screen. If you want the look at the most recent Sundays Julian day number you would add a /D0 between DATES and ECHO. The @ edit character can ONLY be used for getting the julian day, it is included in DATES for compatibility with DAYNBR. DATES /+1000 /D4 ECHO `6### `1####/`3##/`5## `a##:`b##:`c## The above command will first get the system date, add 1000 days to it (/+1000), then find the most recent Thursday (/D4). Then it will produce something like this 'Thu 1993/02/11 17:50:23' DATES /+10 /D5 /-10 ECHO `2##/`0### This will add 10 days (/+10) onto the system date, find the most recent Friday then take 10 days off (/-10) this date. This is different to /+10 /-10 /D5, try it! DATES /J~ /Lc:\dates.log RENAME USERS.TXT USERS~H#.TXT This will rename the file USERS.TXT to either USERS1.TXT or USERS2.TXT, depending on whether the reference date is prior to, or after the 1st of July. The /J~ allows the use of the ~ character in the edit string in place of the default character of `. The command, elapsed time and return code will be written to a log file c:\dates.log. DATES /Fc:\command.com ECHO COMMAND.COM's julian day is `0### This will display the julian day (of the last modification) of the file COMMAND.COM in the root drive of the C: drive. All the other reference date modifiers could also be use in conjunction with the /F option. DATES DAY`6### This command will execute files called DAYSUN, DAYMON, DAYTUE, DAYWED, DAYTHU, DAYFRI, DAYSAT on their respective days. DATES /-7 DATES DATES /+7 ECHO `0A## ``0#B# ````0##C This will show something like this A37 1B4 15C DATES /Q RENAME bbs.log `E########.log This will rename bbs.log to the number of seconds since the new year. The /Q option will suppress any output generated by DATES, but not the RENAME command. Compatibility with DAYNBR. First, a big thanks to Ben Baker for producing DAYNBR V1.0 back in 1985. I just out grew it... with DATES the results. These incompatibilities are due to MS C limitations. If you currently don't use any of the problems and features below, you can copy DATES to DAYNBR and start using it straight away. Incompatibilities DAYNBR can handle dates +/- 32 thousand something from the current date. DATES works in the range 1 Jan 1980 - 18 Jan 2038. DAYNBR can have straight double quotes (") in it's <parameters>. DATES needs a \ (back-slash) if you want the literal double quote ("). I.E. DATES /D5 FIND \";A\" NODELIST.`0### will find all occurrences of ;A in the current nodelist. Enhanced Incompatibilities The following "incompatibilities" are due to my enhancements over DAYNBR. DATES uses the ` (ASCII 096) character as an edit string enabler. If you want to use this character normally, double it up. DATES returns the return code (for testing with the ERRORLEVEL batch facility) of the COMMAND it executed. Your COMSPEC environment variable is REQUIRED to be defined (and pointing to your command processor) under DATES. DAYNBR has COMMAND.COM hard coded into it's code, thus requiring COMMAND.COM to be in the path. Some programs that run under DAYNBR, won't run under DATES. This is usually because the programs don't like being called directly by DATES. Try using the /C option to go through the command processor in these cases. I have found only one program that requires this option so far, that is, IBM's PS2TAPE V1.11 program for DOS. Other Program Offerings The following program offerings are other software developed by myself. If you would like any of them please contact me. GOOSE On-line password checker/changer/enforcer for OPUS 1.0x, OPUS 1.1x and MAXIMUS 1.0x. (DOS) LOGS Split and/or Merge OPUS/BINK style log files. (DOS and OS/2) RECURR Schedule recurring events. (DOS) LOGMSG Log messages (incl disk space) to an OPUS/BINK style log. (DOS and OS/2) MSG Report on statistics of a message area, IE, who contributes and by how much. (DOS and OS/2) History 23 May 90 - Release 1a beta - Released for limited testing. 03 Jun 90 - Release 1a - Added /C Option. 17 Dec 90 - Release 1b - Added /Q, /R and /I options. - Decreased memory usage from around 80KB to around 30KB. - Moved log processing (open/write/close) until after the sub-process has executed. This allows sub-processes that access the log to do so without it being open, such as a backup. - Compiling now with MS C V6.00, which produces smaller faster code. 23 Jun 91 - Release 2a - Added /F, /L and /J options. The /J option was added for 4DOS & DESQVIEW users. 4DOS & DESQVIEW uses the ` character as a quote, with the /J option, you can set the edit character to anything you like. - Added `H#, `Q#, `T#, `S# and `W## edit strings. - Added /P option to the OS/2 version.