Category : File Managers
Archive   : RVT.ZIP
Filename : RVT.DOC

RVT - Rock Visual Tree


Purpose

Rock Visual Tree (RVT) provides a graphical display of the
directory structure of a disk. In addition to displaying a
visual tree, RVT also displays the total number of files and
bytes in each directory.


Uses

RVT is most useful on disks with many directories, such as
hard disks or file servers. RVT's output can be printed so
you have a "map" of your disk's directory structure on-hand,
or it can be used to determine where most of your data or
files are stored. 4Dos users who use 4Dos's "describe"
command on directories can have those comments displayed next
to the directory name (/4d option).

For network managers who manage a number of hard disks, RVT
is useful in showing which subdirectories could be moved to
other disks to balance free disk space. Particularly useful
is the sort option, to show the largest directories first.

Using RVT (e.g., "RVT .") on a specific subdirectory is a
quick way of determining how many bytes are in the directory.


Syntax

RVT [d:][pathname] [options]

Basic Options
/P Pause after each screen page of display
/O Ordered Sort, showing biggest directories first
/O:x Ordered Sort; "x" is N, F, or S, to sort by Name,
Files, or Size (for example, /O:N).
/O:x- Same, but add a - after the letter to reverse sort,
for example "/O:F-"
/FR Traduis … le fran‡ais - Translate output to French
/4D Show 4Dos descriptions (if any) next to directories
/? Show RVT's help information

Examples (see end of file for more examples)
rvt /p Show tree for current disk, pausing each screen
rvt a:\doc Display visual tree starting at a:\doc

Control Keys
ESC Stop the program immediately
Others Pause the program until next key pressed
Additional Control and Output Options
/R Right - display total files & sizes on right side
/L Lower case directory names
/4DL Show 4Dos directory descriptions flush left
/T Text lines only, e.g. +-- instead of ÃÄÄ
/NN No Numbers (omit file count & disk space each dir)
/NH No Header (omit program name at top)
/NF No Footer (omit two lines of stats at the end)
/NM No Meter (omit bar meter while reading sorted tree)
/E Expanded (full) pathnames, no indents or lines
/LD Last Directory name only (omit rest of path)
/SH Skip Hidden directories
/1STnn Show only the first nn dirs (e.g. /1ST20)
/NK No one-key pause/abort
/1K Use 1-key pause/abort even when output redirected
/I Ignore the RVTCMD variable to override your setting


Syntax Description

If you omit the pathname, RVT shows all directories on a
disk. If you specify a directory name (pathname), only the
subdirectories of the specified directory will be shown.
Options can be given without spaces between them, but slashes
are still required. For example "RVT /O /P" is equivalent to
"RVT /O/P".


Environment Variables

If you use certain options a lot, save typing with the RVTCMD
environment variable to set RVT's default parameters, for
example type "SET RVTCMD /P".

An environment variable is a piece of information you record
from the DOS command line to be used by various programs.
Each environment variable consists of a one-word name and an
associated value for the variable, generally a set of words
or symbols. If you type "SET" from the DOS command line,
you'll see your current environment variables. Common ones
include "prompt" and "path", usually set in an autoexec.bat
file. Most DOS handbooks contain a more in-depth discussion
of environment variables and their typical uses.

To set an environment variable, you type something like "SET
NAME WHATEVER VALUE", creating a variable called "NAME" with
the associated value "WHATEVER VALUE", which resides in DOS
memory until you turn your machine off (or type "SET NAME"
with nothing after it). If you type "SET" now, DOS will list
"NAME" along with any previously set environment variables.

How does RVT use environment variables? If you use certain
options almost always (such as /P), you can save typing by
setting a variable called "RVTCMD" with the options you
typically use with RVT. Every time you run RVT, it will
first check the RVTCMD variable to see if you set any options
that you want used every time you run RVT.

For example, type "SET RVTCMD /P /FR" from the DOS command
line to have RVT use the /P and /FR options until you turn
the system off, or add it to your autoexec.bat to set the
parameters each time you boot your system, so RVT will always
use the /P and /FR options.
Customizing output

If you have several sets of default options that you like to
use with RVT, here are two suggestions. One is to have
separate batch files that run RVT with a particular set of
command-line options, for example "RVTS.BAT" might contain
the line "RVT %1 /O /P /L", to run RVT sorted with various
other options. Another approach is to have batch files that
set the RVTCMD environment variable, for example
"RVTS_SET.BAT" could similarly contain the line "SET RVTCMD
/O /P /L", so that after you run rvts_set once, you can just
run RVT, and it will use those parameters.


Note on Hidden Directories

RVT does display hidden directories, and count their contents
in its totals. For power users who create such directories
and want to keep others ignorant of these directories,
use the /SH option to print a tree that omits hidden
directories. Give them just a printout, and don't tell them
about RVT. DOS's TREE command is similar but automatically
skips hidden directories.

For more information on hidden (and hiding) directories, see
the section "RFA - Rock File Attributes."


Note for 4Dos Users

4Dos is a popular shareware command shell used on the PC
(also known as NDOS as distributed with Norton Utilities
6.0). One of the commands it provides is "describe," which
allows a 40 character comment to be given to any file or
directory. For example, if you have two subdirectories named
"wks1" and "wks2", you can type:

describe wks1 "company data from 1986-1989"
describe wks2 "recent company data"

Then, whenever you issue 4Dos's DIR command (or RIR, Rock's
DIR substitute), those comments will be displayed next to the
file names.

If you use 4Dos's "describe" command to attach comments to
directories, you can have those comments displayed next to
the directory names in RVT by using the /4D option.

This is not a default option because looking for the comments
slows RVT down marginally, but if you use it frequently, you
can set /4D as a default using by setting the RVTCMD
environment in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

The /4DL option is the same as the /4D option, but instead of
displaying the comments aligned half way across the screen,
they're shown right next to the directory name, with a single
space separating them.

For unusually long path names (they can theoretically be more
than 60 characters), some 4Dos comments may be cut off.
Trouble-shooting

Trouble-shooting Option
/BIOS Use slower BIOS output instead of "direct screen
writes"

If you have problems displaying RVT's output, or get CGA
"snow", try using the /BIOS parameter. Some programs (like
FANSI, PC-Kwik, other TSRs, and many speech synthesizers)
require BIOS output to work properly.


Known Limitations

RVT has two limitations on its ability to count. File size
counts totalling much more than 2 Gigabytes (a gig is a
thousand megs) may be displayed as negative or inaccurately,
and RVT won't display file totals properly if you have more
than a million files in a single directory. Rock doesn't
expect this to occur any time soon. If anybody encounters
these limits, let us know, and we'll work to overcome them!


More Example Commands
rvt . Show tree from current dir ("." = this dir)
rvt c:\rock Show a dir tree starting at dir C:\ROCK
rvt c:\rock /e Same, but full pathnames instead of a tree
rvt /4dl Show a tree with 4Dos comments next to dirs

rvt /o Show entire disk's dirs sorted by size
rvt /o /l Same, but show the dir names in lower case
rvt /o /1st10 Same, but show just the ten largest dirs
rvt /o:f- Same, but sorted by number of files contained

rvt /t >tr Write a tree w/o line characters to file "tr"
rvt /fr /sh Show output in French, skipping hidden dirs
rvt /nn/nh/nf/e Show just pathnames - no header, footer, etc.
set rvtcmd /p/o Set RVT's default options to /P and /O


Example Output - No parameters

C:\>rvt
RVT - Rock Visual Tree 1.15, (C) 1991 Rock
34 564K C:\ (ROOT)
0 0 ÃÄC
35 1723K ³ ÃÄBIN
28 64K ³ ÃÄINCLUDE
5 4824 ³ ³ ÀÄSYS
68 1252K ³ ÃÄLIB
53 962K ³ ÀÄNEWWORK
1 1722 ÃÄFILES
1 102K ³ ÃÄBUSINESS
10 291K ³ ÃÄPROTOCOL
0 0 ³ ³ ÃÄTEMP
1 12K ³ ³ ÀÄTEMP2
1 170K ³ ÀÄUTILS
16 284K ÀÄDOS

14 directories counted, with 253 files containing 10,250
Kbytes. Directories contain an average of 18 files, which
average 732 Kbytes each.