University of Vaasa, Finland, Linux Pentium, node number
193.166.120.5 (garbo.uwasa.fi) has a large collection of shareware,
freeware and public domain programs which are available by anonymous
ftp (file transfer program) and WWW (World Wide Web). This
information file ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/0newts63.txt contains
news about the programs in the /pc/ts directory (in reverse order).
....................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi Co-moderator of news:comp.archives.msdos.announce
Moderating at ftp:// & http://garbo.uwasa.fi/ archives 193.166.120.5
Department of Accounting and Business Finance ; University of Vaasa
mailto:ts@uwasa.fi <http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/> ; FIN-65101, Finland
Spam foiling in effect. My email filter autoresponder will return a
required email password to users not yet in the privileges database.
....................................................................
N e w s o f 2 0 0 3
Sat 27-Dec-2003: Very minor update
243153 Dec 27 2003 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsbat.zip
tsbat.zip Useful MS-DOS batch files and tricks, T.Salmi, linked
Sat 27-Dec-2003: The new NT/2000/XP FAQ items still come relevant at
a fair pace. Hence made the next update available, as usual as
56675 Dec 27 2003 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
tscmd.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi, linked
With the version number the file is
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tscmd14.zip
This time added the following items
39} Is there a subroutine to convert a variable into uppercase?
40} How do I get the number of arguments given to a script?
41} How can I create a zero-byte file? How do I test for it?
42} What is the subroutine for testing a filename for wildcards?
43} Is there a way of counting the number of files in a folder?
44} How do I get the first 68 columns from a text file?
Fri 19-Dec-2003: Another minor update to adjust some of the
information
243286 Dec 19 2003 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsbat.zip
tsbat.zip Useful MS-DOS batch files and tricks, T.Salmi
or, alternatively, with a version number as
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsbat79b.zip
Fri 19-Dec-2003: Made the next update of my FAQ-like collection of
NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips. It now is in version 13.
Available without the version number as
53884 Dec 19 2003 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
tscmd.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
Added the following new items
34} How can I remove the quote characters from a line?
35} How can I substitute the second field on each line of my file?
36} I start a program from my script and it hogs my command window.
37} How can I insert a line in the middle of a file with a script?
38} How can I set and test the errorlevel within a script file?
Essentially rewrote
10} How can I change the environment variable values within a FOR loop?
to explain delayed variable extension.
Corrected some minor typos (and probably made new ones).
Thu 11-Dec-2003: I have updated
50399 Dec 11 2003 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
tscmd.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi, linked
Also available with a version number as
50399 Dec 11 2003 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tscmd12.zip
tscmd12.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
Added two auxiliary Turbo Pascal program executables to help in
complicated date calculations. The code is based on what I have in
my separate Turbo Pascal FAQ tsfaqp.zip, item #119. It is true that
these conversions can, and have been programmed in straight script
by others. I did not wish duplicate that work. Even more
importantly, a compiled program is fast if there is, say hundreds of
file datetime stamps to browse in some task.
DATE2NUM.EXE Date into a Julian date number
NUM2DATE.EXE A Julian date number into a date
Added the items
31} How many days ago was 31.12.2003? What date it was a 100 days ago?
32} How can I convert a decimal number to binary, octal, hexadecimal?
33} How can I convert a binary, octal, hexadecimal into a decimal?
The item
"14} Help! My old batch files won't work since there is no choice"
now presents the CHOOSE.EXE alternative. The advantage of CHOOSE.EXE
over SET /P is that the former can handle timed default input. The
CHOOSE.EXE program was included in the package.
Thu 11-Dec-2003: I have updated
IBM2LAT1.EXE IBM PC Scandies to Latin1 chars
and added
LAT12IBM.EXE Latin1 IBM chars to PC Scandies
The files are for corverting text files between the ISO-8859-1
Latin1 and the IBM character sets. Used a more comprehensive
conversion table incrasing the number of transformations from just
the Scandies 6 to the more genral 34.
Thu 11-Dec-2003: Updated CHOOSE.EXE "Ask questions in batch/script
files". It is a part of
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsutlf17.zip
Timo's 6th utility set (advdate,choose,deledir,strings,strmemo,)
Where necessary, the other programs in the package now notify about
detecting a Windows_NT OS environment variable. However, the other
programs in the package are irrelevant from the main point this
update (i.e. the generic CHOOSE).
Sat 6-Dec-2003: At the early stages of a FAQ material accumulates
fairly rapidly. I have made an update
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi, linked
Also available with a version number as
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tscmd11.zip
Added the following new items:
21} Do you have pointers to additional script material and tips?
22} How do I capture the current directory name into a variable?
23} How do I get the n:th and the last line of a text file?
24} How do I get the m:th item on the n:th line of a text file?
25} How can I quote with e.g. "> " an entire message?
26} How do I get the length of a string into a variable?
27} How can I remove all the blank lines from a text file?
28} How to convert a file written in IBM PC characters into LATIN1?
29} How do I drop the first two characters of a string, and so on?
30} Can one calculate the difference between two times in a script?
Renamed the first item to be "General information of this script
tricks file package" and right-justified the item's text.
Changed the name of the companion WHERE.CMD "Find a file anywhere
on a drive" to WHEREIS.CMD. Added the option to sort the results by
the file datetime stamp. Therefore also changed the output order of
the files found datetime stamp to YYYY.MM.DD HH:MM. Added the file
attribute field. Added documentation comments to the source.
Added TSCMDIDX.TXT "The questions index separately".
Added M_TSCMD.CMD "A makefile to build this package" to
demonstrate among other things making a ZIP file with file comments
included.
Fri 28-Nov-2003: For some time now I have have considered to
familiarize myself better with the NT/2000/XP scripting by starting
a new FAQ collection. So here we go:
20353 Nov 28 2003 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
tscmd.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi, linked
or, alternatively, with a version number as
20353 Nov 28 2003 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tscmd10.zip
tscmd10.zip Useful NT/w2k/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
However, it is recommended that you link to the file without the
version number.
The main contents 1CMDFAQ.TXT is a text file in a mailbox format.
Thus you can also read it indexed with any suitable mail program.
This is the first version of TSCMD. One purpose of the early
release is to set up the framework for this FAQ. The following items
were included to start with:
1} How get today's date elements into environment variables?
2} On Windows XP how do you stop the script files from closing?
3} How can I customize the Command Prompt Window with script commands?
4} How can I test is it on MSDOS/Win3..9x/Me or NT/2000/XP?
5} How do I get a fully qualified path name of my script?
6} How does one get yesterday's date?
7} How can I test if two files agree in size and datetime stamp?
8} How do I find all the files made at of after YYYYMMDD HHMM?
9} How can I suppress script error messages altogether?
10} How can I change the environment variable values within a FOR loop?
11} How do I retain my original code page in these scripts?
12} How can I rename all my .JPG files sequentially in a directory?
13} How do I get the current day of the week?
14} Help! My old batch files won't work since there is no choice.
15} Is it possible to echo without linefeed like the Unix echo -n?
16} How can I get the time without having to press enter?
17} How can I avoid the potential "ECHO is off." in echoing %myvar%
18} How does one build re-usable script function modules?
19} How can one build a delay / sleep / wait procedure for a script?
20} Is is possible to right-justify numbers or words in a script?
Wed 29-Oct-2003: Just a very minor update correcting some typos etc
238644 Oct 29 00:39 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsbat.zip
tsbat.zip Useful MS-DOS batch files and tricks, T.Salmi, linked
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsbat.zip
or, alternatively, with a version number as
238644 Oct 29 00:39 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsbat79a.zip
tsbat79a.zip Useful MS-DOS batch files and tricks, T.Salmi
Sat 11-Oct-2003: When a FAQ collection has been around for long, the
corrections and additions come far apart. Furthermore, the potential
new tasks usually can be solved with minor variations of the old
material. Such rehashing does not truly add anything. Therefore, the
latest update of my MS-DOS batch FAQ really mostly is cosmetic even
if it has been almost a year since the last update. The update is
available as
238550 Oct 11 2003 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsbat.zip
tsbat.zip Useful MS-DOS batch files and tricks, T.Salmi, linked
or, alternatively, with a version number as
238550 Oct 11 2003 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsbat79.zip
tsbat79.zip Useful MS-DOS batch files and tricks, T.Salmi
Thu 29-May-2003: I have prepared a number of Windows icons for my
own usage. Such a collection might be of some general interest so I
made a new package
38945 May 29 20:31 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsicon10.zip
tsicon10.zip Timo's Windows icons collection, T.Salmi
This material is freeware for private personal usage only.
Mon 6-Jan-2003 : The default names of the text versions of Garbo
archives index files were changed at the beginning of 2003.
Therefore I have made an update of the Garbo index searches
utilities
22812 Jan 6 10:33 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsgarb13.zip
tsgarb13.zip Garbo related utilities for the PC (ffind,gfind), T.Salmi
More importantly, added the following new batch for added
flexibility to handle also other than the MS-DOS file indexes
(Windows 3.1x, Windows 95/98, Unix, and Sinclair QL) at Garbo:
FFINDB.BAT FileFIND index-search batchshell
I do not know how much the gentle Garbo users will need these, but
I need then at least for my own maintenance functions.
Mon 6-Jan-2003: I have updated some of the information and the link
pointers within
125721 Jan 6 10:34 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsfaqn.zip
tsfaqn.zip Questions from Usenet and Timo's answers, linked
alternatively available with a new version number
125721 Jan 6 10:34 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsfaqn50.zip
tsfaqn50.zip Questions from Usenet and Timo's answers
Mon 6-Jan-2003: Updated again
31689 Jan 6 09:44 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsans.txt
tsans.txt Answers about ts-packages, linked from /pc/ts, T.Salmi
Also available with the version number as
31689 Jan 6 09:44 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsans102.txt
tsans102.txt Answers to some recurring questions about TS-packages
Sat 4-Jan-2003: Made a notification update
30871 Jan 4 22:34 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tsans101.txt
tsans101.txt Answers to some recurring questions about TS-packages
This file has been superseded by a set of more modern-day WWW-based
set FAQ pages including
:
Miscellaneous questions, information and
comments about Timo's programs etc
http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/garbo.html#faqtimo
:
Some Frequently Asked Garbo Questions
http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/garbo.html#faq
:
Latest news about the files in /pc/ts directory
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/0news_ts.txt
:
Answers to some frequently asked personal questions
http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/personal.html
Wed 1-Jan-2003: The older news about the files in the /pc/ts
directory http://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts.html are available as
:
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/0newts62.txt
The news announcements of 2002 about ts-programs, T.Salmi
:
and so on, backwards.