October 16, 1990 TRASH.EXE Page 1
The Directory Trasher
by Dennis K. Courtney


I. Some notes about TRASH

TRASH is just another directory file trasher. It will delete any
file and/or subdirectory associated with the named directory. It
displays the directory being removed in a window on the right of the
screen and it displays the files being removed in a window on the left
of the screen. Press ANY key during the operation of the program and
the program will terminate. TRASH has been tested on color and B/W
systems and works on network drives as well.
To display the syntax, just enter TRASH with no parameters:

C:\TRASH

II. A little example

Let's assume that you have a directory tree structure some thing like
this:

C:\

C:\123\C:\123\ALLWAYS\
123.COM ALLWAYS.EXE
LOTUS.COM SIDEWAYS.EXE
LOTUS.OVL NICEPRT.COM

C:\123\WKS\
WORKSHT.WK1
BUDGET.WK1

If you issue the TRASH command to delete all of your Lotus worksheets,
you'd write it like this :

TRASH C:\123\WKS

In this case, TRASH would delete all of the files in C:\123\WKS and
then delete that subdirectory, sort of like issuing two commands.

DELETE C:\123\WKS\*.* and RD C:\123\WKS

Of course, if you wanted to TRASH the entire Lotus directory, you'd
write it like this :

TRASH C:\123

In this case, TRASH would first delete all of the files in the lowest
subdirectory (C:\123\WKS), then delete all of the files in the next
lowest subdirectory (C:\123\ALLWAYS) and finally, delete all of the
files in the highest directory (C:\123), removing the directory entries
as it goes along.




October 16, 1990 TRASH.EXE Page 2
The Directory Trasher
by Dennis K. Courtney


As you can see, TRASH is an ordinary file/directory remover. What makes
TRASH different is:

1. TRASH always tells you what it's doing, as it's doing it.
The window (cyan) on the left shows the file being deleted,
the window (white) on the right show the current subdirectory.
Each window scrolls to show all files.
2. You can STOP the process at anytime simply by pressing a key
on your keyboard. Of course, all files and subdirectories
deleted up until that moment are gone (probably recoverable
with an UNERASE utility, but no promises!).
3. When it's finished, TRASH displays a summary of how many
files, directories and bytes were affected.
4. TRASH will warn you if you do something stupid like issue
this command :
TRASH C:\
and require you to answer YES that you really do want to
delete EVERY file from your ROOT directory downward,
effectively erasing your entire hard drive.
5. TRASH is FREE !

Dennis K. Courtney
CServ [76357,3314]