OTHER NAME 23 augustus 1991 There suddenly exists a very similar program, which on Bulletin Boards has the name 4WIN110.ZIP. It has a 4WIN.EXE executable and does more or less same as my PSHELL, but I think mine is better ;-). Aw, that guy does not even have a DESCRIBE-function! I used the name 4WIN for the compressed files, 'cause it was rather meaningful (4dos for WINdows). To avoid confusion I'll ship my program as 4SHELLxx, where xx is the version number. Hans Paijmans. DISCLAIMER All the usual disclaimers go here: use PSHELL at your own risk and don't come wailing to me if bugs in the program eat your disk, your computer and your pet canary. As far as I know there are no dangerous bugs in PSHELL and I certainly did not put a virus in it. Please read the copyright notice: althoug not too many strings are attached (pun not intended), this program is not public domain. I will now stop development of this version (1.): it was only meant to give me the first 'feel' of Turbo pascal for Windows. Version (2) will be around later this year. I will use it to delve into the niceties of the OWL development kit, which comes with TPW, but looks, sounds and smells VERY complicated! PSHELL version 2 will have some new tricks, which I also miss in WINDOWS. Comments and suggestions are always welcome as are bottles with beer! See address below. (Must see the first dutchman yet who sends a bottle of beer for what he can have for free!). DIRECTIONS OF USE Put PSHELL.EXE and PSHELL.HLP somewhere in your path. There is an Icon in PSHELL, but it does not seem to come out if the program is minimized. If you like PSHELL, add a line like RUN = E:\BIN\PSHELL.EXE in WIN.INI and it will be around when WINDOWS awakens. Use the HELP-command to learn about the commands. A synopsis is given below, but I keep adding things and forgetting about them later. PSHELL does not cover all 4DOS-commands, switches and parameters. It reflects those functions that I use regularly, but there are many very sensible functions that are not in PSHELL, because I do not happen to need them. Tell you what: send me a bottle of Belgian beer and I'll add them in for you. DEVELOPMENT HISTORY. PSHELL version 1.0 copyright Hans Paijmans 1991. PSHELL was born from the conviction that ten fingers and a keyboard are better tools to perform typical housekeeping-tasks on the PC than mice and other pointing devices. Also I am addicted to 4DOS, the well-known alternative for COMMAND.COM from JP Software and many of my directories have 4DOS-descriptions attached. Alas! none of the command-line shells for WINDOWS, that I have seen, seems to support them. So I wrote another command-line shell for MS-WINDOWS, but one that should be able to read the 4DOS DESCRIPT.ION-files. It is at the moment a very rough-and-ready affair, but it works. How to use it: ------> Refer to 4DOS help if the following is not clear. COPY, REN, DEL and DIR may be used and changes will be reflected in the descriptions. Parameters not supported at the moment. TYPE and LIST are identical. They support wildcards. Press ESC to cancel the typing of the current file, ctrl_C to quit. S to stop scrolling, any key to start again. CHDIR, RMDIR, MKDIR work as expected (by me, that is). CDD changes both path and disk. DESCRIBE filenaam: will enable the user to add 4DOS descriptions to files in the directory. DOS and MS-WINDOWS commands may be typed on the commandline to start execution. This works for BAT-files and PIF-files too. The DOS path-environment is copied to PSHELL and expanded when searching for an executable file. If one is found, first a CHDIR to that directory is executed. EXIT. To kill the 4PSHELL just type EXIT on the command-line. ============================================================================== PSHELL version 1.01 Bug removed, which prevented execution of external commends, if not in path. CD, RD and MD now also work as MKDIR, CHDIR etc. PUSHD dirname, DIRS and POPD added, with stack of twenty directory-names. MEMORY and FREE added (RAM and default disk). MOVE added (deletes files after copying them). HISTORY added. ============================================================================== PSHELL version 1.02 -- 12 juni 1991 Scrollbar activated. Virtual PSHELL-window now is 256 lines and may be scrolled back and forth. CLS added (guess what). TREE added (displays directory-tree). ^E is now automatically followed by ^F when editing the command- history. /w - switch added to DIR (for wide display). Bug removed, which impeded DELETE and COPY after a number of times. Bug removed, which prevented loading programs if path was set. Bug removed, which sometimes did not update the descriptions after REN. ============================================================================= PSHELL version 1.03 /a - switch added to DIR (displays attributes in stead of comments); /c - switch added to TYPE to add CR to lines, which don't have one. GLOBAL added for executing an internal command over several directories. Try GLOBAL DEL *.* to get the general idea. (NO! Don't take me serious!). STOP added, to quit WINDOWS without first having to discuss it with the progam manager. You have to enter 'Y' in uppercase to confirm. HELP added, which was a major pain in the ass. But thanks to God, Phillipe Kahn and my own gigantic intelligence, I finally figured how to write MS-WINDOWS help-files. DOS a command, which starts the COMMAND-interpreter that is in the COMSPEC-variable (either DOS or 4DOS). command line editor added; ^E, ^X, ^S and ^D function as Uparrow, downarrow, left and right. ^A and ^F as HOME and END. As I said, I am waiting for a trick to read the scancodes. You 'll remember that in 4DOS the up-arrow cycled back through the command-history, and the down-arrow forward. ^E and ^X do it now in 4PSHELL. Don't forget to use HOME (^A) and END (^F) to finish the edited command-line. NB. this is fixed in version 1.04. Arrows now work like expected. ============================================================================= PSHELL version 1.04 My thanks to Martin Fridael who tested the previous versions. Backslash and point may be placed behind commands without intervening space. N.B. spaces before the slash of a switch are obligatory! The caret (^) now may be used to combine several commands on the command line. DIR now displays the correct free space (in stead of the space of the defaultdisk). DOS-command removed in favour of 4DOS or COMMAND. Try them to see which one works on your system. STOP! quits Windows without confirmation ARROW-keys and Home/End now work too! Finally got my fingers between the keys. The close-box left-up now works without letting an accidental CTRL-C clobber the window. ===================================================================== PSHELL version 1.05 DIR Displays sum of files in a directory. DEL Now you can stop a DEL *.* by pressing ctrl-c. I did find out the hard way that ctrl-c did not work here. EXCEPT (one of that 4DOS-goodies) works too! Just put filespecs inside parenthesis and give a disk-command. e.g. EXCEPT (*.EXE *.COM) COPY *.* B: It works by first setting the attributes of the files between the parenthesis on HIDDEN and READONLY, executing the command and setting the HIDDEN and READONLY off again. NOTE: files of that filespec, which were hidden or read-only to begin with, are changed to NOT hidden and NOT readonly! SET may be used to examine DOS environment variables (not to SET them!) ============================================================================== PSHELL version 1.06 Although I considered version 1.05 as the final version, they kept pestering me for refinements like storing the window-dimensions in an INI-file. I consider it rot, but here goes... EXIT /S causes the current parameters to be saved in a PSHELL.INI. ============================================================================== PSHELL version 1.07 Some germans asked for umlauts etc in the descriptions... They got it. But I did not find out how to enter them in PSHELL, so they will have to do this kind of descriptions in the 4DOS-shell, although they may read them in PSHELL. If they know how to make WINDOWS recognize that horrible german keyboards, they may tell me about it. /S added to TYPE and LIST. It suppresses weird characters and adds CR/LF's, so that you may TYPE executables and other non-ASCII-files. /W trims bit 8 (useful for some wordprocessor-files). Support added for the excellent WINBATCH batchprocessor for Windows from Morris Wilson. A shareware version can be downloaded from any well-equipped BBS. Just put WINBATCH and the batchfile (extension WBT) somewhere in your path. Of course WINBATCH will nag you for registration every first time you use it in a session. I will nag you for a bottle of beer, every time you read this. INDES. The command INDES has been added, which enables the selection of files which have a certain string in their description-part (not case- sensitive). So INDES "foobar" DEL *.BAK means "delete all *.bak-files with 'foobar' somewhere in the description. and INDES NOT "foobar" DEL *.bak means "delete all *.bak-files, except those with 'foobar' somewhere in the description... Try it! It effectively makes the filenames 40 characters longer! I might go and implement it as an addition to 4DOS, it works that well! DESCRIBE now accepts a stringargument, which lets you add descriptions to a lot of files in one command. like: DESCRIBE PSHELL*.* "That beautiful shell of Paijmans F1 may be used to start HELP now. And I finally got that bloody Icon nailed! It is not necessary anymore to give the drive explicitly when starting a BAT-file in the default-directory. Some minor bugs squashed, notably in Type, the file-comments and rename, thanks to Petri Hartoma, who also suggested the ICON-fix. Also a bug, wich prohibited executing external commands, which were preceded by a disk and colon. ============================================================================== PSHELL version 1.09 23 August 1991 PSHELL version 2.01 BAC added, which works like COPY, but only copies new files and files, which are younger than the files on the destination drive UPDATE added, which copies only younger files over older files, but does not add new files. BEEP added. Look, you're not gonna believe this, but it beeps. LOAD added, which loads and minimizes a task as an Icon. INDES is split in INDES and INDESI. INDES now is case-sensitive and INDESI is not. WHERE filenaam. Searches default disk for file(s) BATCH-files. It had to come: PSHELL now has batchfiles of its own. Just use ASCII-files with the extension .PBT. Currently supported are: ECHO on|off|messagestring REM PAUSE message 9 parameters (%1 .. %9) IF parameter == string .... (mind the spaces around the == !) also eq, ne, gt, lt, le, ge EXISTS filename GOTO label :label ================================================================== COPYRIGHT NOTICE Although everybody is invited to copy PSHELL for private use, the program is NOT public domain. I want to keep all options open to prohibit criminal, racist, zionist and fascist organizations to profit from my work. Suggestions and donations of bottles with Belgian beer are welcome at Hans Paijmans Elzenstraat 1 5183 VS Waalre Holland PAAI@KUB.NL (bitnet).