Name Date (ND) Revision 2.00 Copyright 1989-1992 by Gordon Haff and Bit Masons Consulting. All rights reserved. Freeware program. Command: ND Purpose: Rename specified filenames(s) to a specified format such as the current date. This is NOT yet another "touch" utility. It does NOT change the file's time/date stamp, it changes the name. For example, in the default configuration, a file such as CHANNEL1.QWK would be renamed to 920203.QWK if the current date were 02/03/92. This is a handy way of consistently renaming log files or message packets so you can archive them. Syntax: ND filenames [/f=] [/e=] [/d=] [/t=] [/p] [/b] [/?] Prereqs: 100% IBM Compatible PC running DOS 2.1 or higher Archive Name: NAMD200.ZIP New Feature Summary: ND has been significantly enhanced in rev 2.0 to allow much more flexibility in naming format. The user can now specify a variety of formats and other settings on the command line. Default settings are the same as for rev 1.0, so existing users do not have to make any changes to accommodate the new revision. ÚÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ¿ ÚÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄ¿ ³ (tm) Äij ³o ³ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ³ ÚÄÄÄÄÄÁÐÄÄ¿ ³ Association of ³ ³ ³ÄÙ Shareware ÀÄÄij o ³ Professionals ÄÄÄÄÄij º ³ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ ÀÄÄÄÄÐÄÄÄÄÙ MEMBER ND 2.00 2 DISCLAIMER The author hereby disclaims all warranties relating to these products, whether express or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The author cannot and will not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, indirect or similar damages due to loss of data or any other reason, even if the author or an authorized agent has been advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event shall the liability for any damages ever exceed the price paid for the license to use the software, regardless of the form and/or extent of the claim. The user of this program bears all risk as to the quality and performance of the software. LICENSE Name Date is distributed as free, copyrighted software. What this means is that you can use these programs for as long as you like without cost or obligation. What you cannot do is to sell this software or make a profit off of it (except as described below) without the express written permission of the author. Name Date is the sole property of Gordon Haff. This program may be freely copied and transferred to individual parties. It may be posted on Bulletin Board systems (BBS) for electronic access as long as NO FEE is charged for its distribution except for private BBS operations that charge a regular user subscription fee. Computer information services such as Compuserve (CIS), Genie, and Byte Information Exchange (BIX) are authorized to post this product for subscriber access. Name Date may be distributed on diskette only by 1) disk distributors/vendors who are associate members of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP) or 2) users groups which do not charge more than a nominal fee ($5) to cover the costs of distribution. Any changes to these policies must be made in writing by the author. This software is produced by a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals (ASP). The 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 545 Grover Rd., Muskegon, MI 49442-9427 or send a Compuserve message via easyplex to ASP Ombudsman 70007,3536. ND 2.00 3 TECHNICAL SUPPORT Since this program is a freebie, unlike the shareware programs for which I request a registration fee, I'm not going to make any guarantees here with respect to bug fixes or other technical support. Having said that, I do like my programs to be as bug-free as possible, so feel free to report any problems which you run across. Contact via: Channel 1 BBS (617) 354-8873 Compuserve User ID# 72561,2637 (See Note 1) InterNet/ARPANET 72561.2637@compuserve.com U.S. Mail 3205 Windsor Ridge Dr. Westboro MA 01581 Telephone (508) 898-3321 (after 6pm Eastern time) The above are roughly in order of preference (i.e. how quickly I'm likely to see your message and be able to respond). I check Channel One almost daily and the other electronic services at least weekly in most cases. In addition, I monitor the Interlink and the PCRelay Shareware relays through Channel One. Note 1: When contacting me via Compuserve, please use the Easyplex mail system since I do not regularly monitor any of the IBM SIG message bases. ND 2.00 4 1.0 Why ND? --------------- Sometimes when you gather information such as logs or message packets from some source (such as QWK mail packets from your local BBS), you'd like to be able to rename them in some consistent manner for archiving purposes. A couple years back, I wrote a little utility called ND to do this for me. It did the job for me -- it would take something like CHANNEL1.QWK and rename it to 920203.QWK if Feb. 03, 1992 were the current date. It would even stick on a letter ranging from A to Z if it had to to prevent duplicates. As I say, this worked fine for my purposes, but wouldn't you know it? Some people are never satisfied. I made slightly patched versions which worked a little differently for a couple of whiners. But I still got some requests in for a more flexible version. Finally, I decided to break down and do a new rev which gives users lots more flexibility. Here it is. Now stop your bitching! ND 2.00 5 2.0 How does it Work? ------------------------- The syntax is as follows: ND filenames [/f=] [/e=] [/d=] [/t=] [/p] [/b] [/?] Other than at least one filename, you don't need to enter anything. Wildcards are fine for the filenames. The other stuff are switches. Maybe I shouldn't tell you what they do and make you figure them out yourself. But I suppose that wouldn't be much fun since they're listed in the on-line help screen anyway. (By the way, you can use a - instead of a / if you're one of those odd Unix people who prefer to do that sort of thing.) So here they are: /F= This allows you to specify a new format string. The default one which is perfectly good for me and should be perfectly good for other normal people is YYMMDDA . The format string specifies the form the new name of the file will take. It has no effect on the extension (see the /e switch), just the first 8 characters. The following are valid format string entries: yyyy Year (4 digit) yy Year (2 digit) mm Month dd Day hh Hour tt Minute 'xyz' Literal (i.e. insert what's between the ' and ') a Put 1 to 4 of these in a row for "duplication preventers" between A and Z n Ditto but with the digits 0 to 9 Not surprisingly, the various dates and times use the current system date and time unless you override them with other switches. ND 2.00 6 Some examples of valid formats are: /f=yymmddaa /f='grh'yymma /f=yymmddtt You get the idea. A few notes: o Only add one non-duplicator sequence (e.g. aa) per format string. The following is invalid: /f=yynnaa o Use a ' rather than a " for literals. Odd things will happen if you use a ". o 8 characters is the maximum (not counting the quotes around literals) /E= Specify a new extension for the renamed files. Normally ND will just use the same extension which the file had originally. Example: /e=LOG /D= Specify a new date of the form mm/dd/yy. Normally ND will use the current system date. ND only does limited up-front checking for date validity. A date like 2/31/91 will not be caught as invalid (though 2/32/91 would). Examples: /d=2/16/92 /d=09-12-93 /T= Specify a new time in the form hh:mm. The format is 24-hr. AM and PM-type formats are not accepted. Limited checking for out-of-range numbers is performed. Example: /t=22:14 /P Displays the current format setting and prompts before actually renaming any files on the disk. ND 2.00 7 /B Append a duplicate prevention character on the first filename. The following example shows what I means by this (assume the format is YYMMDDA, i.e. the default). No /B switch /B switch TEST0.TST -> 920203.TST TEST0.TST -> 920203A.TST TEST1.TST -> 920203A.TST TEST1.TST -> 920203B.TST /? Displays a help screen. 3.0 Technical and Acknowledgments. -------------------------------------- ND 2.0 was developed using Borland C++ 3.0. The hardware environment was a homebrew 386 (named Dejah Thoris) based on an AMI 20MHz full-size motherboard with a Micropolis 160MB ESDI disk and Ultrastore 12(F) ESDI controller. It is a dual monitor system with an Orchid Prodesigner 512KB VGA board and an IBM MDA board. ND 2.00 6 4.0 Other Programs by Gordon Haff and Bit Masons Consulting: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Directory Freedom (DF): Offers users a fast, compact alternative to DOS Shells which provides 1) selective file and directory operations; 2) a scrollable environment for examining files and directories; 3) user-defined keys which can operate upon highlighted files (e.g. by defining an editor). All this in a program which takes less than 25KB since it is written in assembler! Easily customized through an external configuration program. A "look- and-feel" similar to PC Mag's DR, but does much more. Now with SmartViewers and many more exciting new features. Shareware: $20 Registration Latest version: 4.50 (DF450.ZIP) the last word: 'the last word' is a quotations trivia game in which 1 to 4 players compete against each other and their own high scores in identifying the source of quotations and completing partial quotes. Most answers are entered free-form and are matched against a set of acceptable responses with a sophisticated pattern-recognition algorithm. 'the last word' runs in text mode -- including on mono displays -- and offers a high level of user configurability. Shareware: $15 Registration Latest version: 1.00 (LWORD100.ZIP) CONVERT: Unit conversion calculator for Windows 3.0. Comes with a data file containing a large number of common (and not so common) conversions in categories such as length, speed, pressure, volume, and time. The data file is a plain ASCII text file so the user may add or delete units to best fit his individual needs. Free, copyrighted software Latest version: 1.0 (CNVRT100.ZIP) ND 2.00 7 X-Ray Viewers: The X-Ray Viewers provide a scrollable environment for examining the contents of various types of archive files and allows the user to view those contents by piping them to LIST. In other words, you can read a text file contained within, for example, a .ZIP file without extracting the archive. In combination with the SmartViewer functions in DF, the X-Ray viewers make the examination of .ZIP, .ARJ, .LZH, and .ZOO files almost automatic (just highlight a file and press ). "Freeware" but requires the appropriate archive program and LIST to function. Free, copyrighted software Latest revision: 1.10 (XRAY110.ZIP) MAKETEST: Command-line utility to create test files. Lets you create any number of test files with user-specified names and sizes. Automatically can add characters to avoid duplicate names. This is an easy way to create something like 100 zero-length files. Handy for users or programmers who want to test a program's capabilities. Free, copyrighted software with QB source Latest version: 1.0 (MKTST100.ZIP) These programs and others (Multi-Edit macros for use with Qmail Deluxe, for example) are available on many fine bulletin boards. The latest releases are always available on Channel One. If you just have to get a copy of one or more of these programs and can't find one, however, I can send them out for a nominal media and postage charge. ND 2.00 7 5.0 History: --------------- Rev. 2.0 Completely rewritten. Switches and many other user options added Rev. 1.0 Initial Release