Category : Windows 3.X Files
Archive   : 4DOSNT20.ZIP
Filename : TOUR.DOC

4DOS

4OS2

4DOS for Windows NT





Guided Tour







Published By

JP Software Inc.
P.O. Box 1470
East Arlington, MA 02174
U.S.A.

(617) 646-3975
fax (617) 646-0904









Copyright 1993, JP Software Inc., All Rights Reserved. 4DOS is a
registered trademark and 4OS2, JP Software, and the JP Software
logo and product logos are trademarks of JP Software Inc. Other
product and company names are trademarks of their respective
owners.

11-93

Starting The Tour
-------------------------------------------------------------------


A GUIDED TOUR OF 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT


This booklet will acquaint you with some of the features of 4DOS,
4OS2, and 4DOS/NT. It isn't a substitute for the other manuals,
but it will help you understand how familiar our products seem if
you are used to the traditional command prompt, and it will
introduce you to many of our most popular features and
enhancements. By the time you finish this guided tour, you will
have a feeling for how easy and friendly 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT
are compared to the traditional command processor.

This tour is interactive. Sit down at your computer with this
booklet. Each time an example is shown, try it. The tour will
create all of the files it uses; it won't modify or change your
existing files and subdirectories at all. Each section of the tour
is self-contained so you can skip any sections you wish and return
to them later.

In this tour we won't attempt to cover all the details of each
feature we introduce. If you want complete information about any
command or topic discussed in the tour, see the online help or the
Reference Manual. If you come across terms or concepts that you
are unsure about, refer to the General Concepts chapter, the
Glossary, or the Index in the Reference Manual.


Starting The Tour

Before you can start the tour, you need to install your new
command processor. If you haven't done so yet, see the
Introduction and Installation Guide for instructions. Select
"Tour Installation" from the INSTALL menu to copy the
necessary files to your disk without making any modifications
to your system configuration files. If you have already done
a full installation and 4DOS, 4OS2, or 4DOS/NT is running on
your system, just skip the step below where the command
"4DOS", "4OS2", or "4NT" is entered.

During the course of the tour, we'll ask you to enter several
commands. Your entries are shown in lower case, but you can
type in either upper or lower case.

The display may look slightly different on your system,
depending on how your prompt is set up, what disk drive you're
using, and what files are in your installation directory.
Don't worry about any minor differences.



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Starting The Tour
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In some cases, the computer's output will be too long to fit
on a line of this booklet and remain readable. We've
truncated those lines and placed three dots [...] at the end
to show you that the actual line displayed on your screen will
be longer. Some commands create more lines of output than we
need to display here to show how they work. We've put a line
of nine dots [... ... ...] in those locations to indicate that
additional information will be shown on your screen.

We've written the tour as if you were using 4DOS, because it's
our most popular product. The few minor differences in 4OS2
and 4DOS/NT are noted in the text.

To start the tour, first change to the directory where 4DOS,
4OS2, or 4DOS/NT was installed, using the CD command. For
example, if you've used the directory C:\4DOS, enter the
following command:

C:\> cd 4dos
C:\4DOS>

Now start 4DOS by typing:

C:\4DOS> 4dos

This starts 4DOS in "test drive" mode -- it isn't permanently
installed, but you can use it for the tour or other testing.
If you are using 4OS2, type 4OS2; if you are using 4DOS/NT,
type 4NT. If you have already performed a full installation,
skip this step.

You'll see a sign-on message that looks similar to this,
followed by a prompt:

4DOS EMS swapping initialized (128K)
4DOS 5.0 DOS 6.2
Copyright 1988-1993 Rex Conn & JP Software Inc.
... ... ...

c:\4dos>

Depending on how your prompt was previously defined, you may
now see it in lower case, which most people find easier to
read. A lower case prompt is the default, and we'll show the
prompt that way throughout the tour. Once you have 4DOS,
4OS2, or 4DOS/NT fully installed you can use the PROMPT
command to change it to upper case if you prefer.

If you started 4DOS, 4OS2, or 4DOS/NT in "test drive" mode and
want to exit at any time, just type the command EXIT at the

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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 2

Basic Commands
-------------------------------------------------------------------

prompt and press Enter. This will return you to the
traditional DOS, OS/2, or Windows NT command line:

c:\4dos> exit
C:\4DOS>


Basic Commands

We'll begin the tour by demonstrating some of the most common,
and most familiar, commands. We'll also show you some of the
enhancements that we've added to those commands to make your
computing easier.

First, enter the single-character command ?. You'll see a
display like this:

c:\4dos> ?

? ALIAS ATTRIB BEEP ...
CD CDD CHCP CHDIR ...
CTTY DATE DEL DELAY ...
... ... ...
UNSET VER VERIFY VOL ...

The ? command displays a list of all the commands built into
your new command processor. You certainly don't have to
memorize them all -- we'll show you how to get help with any
command in a few moments. Nor are we going to demonstrate all
of these commands in this tour. If you want complete
information about a command, see the online help or the
Command Reference chapter in the Reference Manual.

Now try a DIR command to see a list of files in the current
directory. DIR displays a list of file names, sizes, dates,
and times:

c:\4dos> dir

Volume in drive C is JPS_TEST Serial number ...
Directory of c:\4dos\*.*

. 10-14-93 14:21
.. 10-14-93 14:21
4dos.com 148264 11-23-93 5:00 4DOS 5.0 ...
4dos.doc 345005 11-23-93 5:00 4DOS 5.0 ...
4dos.ico 766 11-23-93 5:00 Color ...
4dos.pif 545 11-23-93 5:00 PIF file ...
... ... ...
tour2.btm 2765 11-23-93 5:00 Guided ...

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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 3

Basic Commands
-------------------------------------------------------------------

updat50.doc 37946 11-23-93 5:00 Informat ...
833,056 bytes in 21 file(s) 851,968 bytes ...
18,651,136 bytes free

The DIR display should look familiar. But, unlike the
traditional DIR display, you'll see the file names in lower
case and in alphabetical order. We also give you some totals
at the end of the display that help you see how much space
your files are using. The text at the right end of each line
is a file description -- it will be there if you installed
4DOS from diskette (as opposed to a downloaded copy). We'll
discuss descriptions later in the tour.

By using some of DIR's options, you can make the display even
easier to read. The directory display you just saw probably
didn't fit on your screen. You can tell DIR to pause at the
end of each page by using the command DIR /P. The /P is an
example of a switch or option which modifies the behavior of a
command. Enter the DIR /P command now:

c:\4dos> dir /p

You'll see the same display, but with a pause at the end of
each page.

You might prefer to display directories in 2 columns. DIR
will do that if you include the /2 option. If you add the /V
option, it will perform a vertical sort, with file names
running alphabetically down the first column and then down the
second column. (We've left the display out of this booklet,
because the second column doesn't fit on the page. You'll be
able to see it on the screen.)

c:\4dos> dir /2/v


[The 2-column directory display will appear here.]

DIR has many other formatting and file selection options; all
of them are explained under the DIR command in your Reference
Manual.

Next, you'll use a simple batch file called TOUR1.BTM to
create a dummy file. (A .BTM batch file is similar to a
traditional .BAT or .CMD batch file, but faster.) To run
TOUR1.BTM, enter the command:

c:\4dos> tour1

This batch file creates a small file called FILE1 in your
current directory. The contents of the file aren't important;

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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 4

Basic Commands
-------------------------------------------------------------------

we're simply using it to demonstrate some file-handling
capabilities. You can verify that FILE1 has been created by
using DIR again.

Now use the COPY command to copy the contents of FILE1 to a
new file, FILE2:

c:\4dos> copy file1 file2
c:\4dos\file1 => c:\4dos\file2
1 file(s) copied

The copy was performed just like the traditional COPY command,
but the output is friendlier: COPY tells you exactly what
file it copied, where it copied the file to, and a count of
files at the end.

Now try renaming a file. If you've used the traditional
RENAME command or its synonym REN, this will look familiar:

c:\4dos> ren file1 file3
c:\4dos\file1 -> c:\4dos\file3
1 file(s) renamed

Like COPY, the REN command tells you just what it did. You

now have two files, FILE2 and FILE3, in the current directory.
You can use another enhancement to add the extension .TST to
both of them:

c:\4dos> ren file2 file3 *.tst
c:\4dos\file2 -> c:\4dos\file2.tst
c:\4dos\file3 -> c:\4dos\file3.tst
2 file(s) renamed

Unlike the traditional REN command, our enhanced version lets
you rename multiple files with a single command. All file
processing commands like COPY, DEL, MOVE, and RENAME accept
multiple file names, so you can combine several file
operations instead of using a separate command for each file.

Now delete the files you have just created. You could use a
simple command like DEL *.TST, but that would delete any other
.TST files in the current directory also. To protect against
erasing files that you might want to keep, add a /P option to
DEL so that it will prompt you before it deletes each file.
Answer Y to the prompts shown below to delete your test files:

c:\4dos> del *.tst /p
Delete c:\4dos\file3.tst (Y/N/R)? y
Delete c:\4dos\file2.tst (Y/N/R)? y
2 file(s) deleted 4,096 bytes freed

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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 5

Command Line Editing and History
-------------------------------------------------------------------

(The R response listed in the prompt means "process the rest
of the files." You can use it to skip further prompting
during a command.)

To verify all these actions, you can do a DIR or DIR /P to
look at what files are left in the directory. All the files
you've just created (FILE1, FILE2, FILE3, FILE2.TST, and
FILE3.TST) should be gone.

The features we've demonstrated here -- traditional commands
with enhancements that make your work easier -- are present
throughout 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT. If you want more details,
pick a traditional command that you're familiar with and look
up the corresponding command in the Reference Manual or online
help to get an idea of what's new and improved. (Remember
that 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT only replace internal commands
like COPY and DIR, not external commands like DISKCOPY and
FORMAT.)


Command Line Editing and History

This section demonstrates features which make it easy to
correct typing mistakes at the system prompt, to repeat
previous commands, and to get help with any command.

We can't show you exact examples here as easily as we can in
the other sections of the tour, since the display depends on
the exact keystrokes you type and we want you to experiment a
little. So we'll guide you through what you can do, and
you'll see the results on your screen.

First, create a typing error, with an incorrect DIR command:

c:\4dos> dur /2

Traditionally, you would have had to use the Backspace key to
erase most of the line in order to correct this error, or
press Esc and start over. Command line editing makes
corrections much easier. Press the Home key followed by the
right arrow. The cursor will move to the start of the line
and then right one space to the "u" in "dur". Type an "i" and
the command should be correct. To execute it, press Enter;
if you'd rather not, press Esc.


That's a simple example of command line editing. You can use
the left and right arrow keys, Home and End, and Backspace and
Del to move around and modify your command line at any time,
just like you do in your word processor or editor. Other keys
let you move the cursor a word at a time, delete words, change

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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 6

Command Line Editing and History
-------------------------------------------------------------------

between overstrike and insert modes, and perform many other
operations. Esc always clears the line and lets you start
over.

4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT remember the commands you type in a
command history. We'll use the HISTORY command to display the
commands that you have used so far during this tour:

c:\4dos> history
?
dir
... ... ...
dir /2

You normally have room for about 1000 characters of history,
but you can reduce or enlarge this amount to suit your own
needs.

Now press the up-arrow key once. The last command in the
HISTORY display (DIR /2 in the example above) will appear at
the prompt. You can use the editing keys to modify this
command, which is usually much easier than retyping it. To
execute the command again, whether or not you've modified it,
press Enter. To clear the line, press Esc.

If you'd like to see more commands, first press Esc to clear
the command line. (To see all commands in the history, you
should always start with an empty command line.) Now press
up-arrow several times. Each time you press it, you will back
up one more line in the command history. Once you find the
line you're looking for, you can modify it if you like and
then press Enter to execute it.

Now imagine that you have been working for a while. An hour
ago you did a complex DIR command and you need to do it again.
You could scroll through an hour's worth of command history.
But another feature called command completion will save you
time.

First, type the beginning of the command -- DI, or DIR. Now
press the up-arrow. This will recall the newest command in
the history that starts with the characters you typed (if
there are no matches, you'll hear a beep). Press up-arrow
again to retrieve the command before that, still matching to
the characters you originally typed.

You can try this feature now using DI or DIR, because you've
put several DIR commands into the command history during this
tour.


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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 7

Command Line Help
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps you would prefer to look at a list of commands that
you have entered and choose from the list. First press the
Esc key to clear the command prompt. Then press the PgUp key.
You will see a history window in the upper right corner of
your screen showing the commands you've recently typed. You
can move around in this window with the up-arrow and down-
arrow keys. PgUp and PgDn scroll the display a page at a
time. When you find the command you want, press Enter to re-
execute it as is, or press Ctrl-Enter to move the line to the
prompt where you can edit it as usual.


Command Line Help

You can get help for 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT any time you need
it from the command prompt -- just press the F1 key.

If you're using 4DOS, you'll see a display of all the HELP
topics when you press F1. If you would like some help with
COPY, move the cursor bar to COPY, or just type COPY and 4DOS
will move the bar for you. Press Enter to see help on the
topic; once you're there, scroll through the help using the
vertical arrows or PgUp and PgDn keys. The highlighted items
within a topic are cross-references to other topics; select
one with the horizontal arrow keys and press Enter to view it.
Press Esc to back up, or F1 to return to the topic list.

For more help using the 4DOS help system, see the Help topic
at the beginning of the topic list. If you have a mouse, see
the Mouse topic.

Under 4OS2, F1 will start VIEW.EXE, OS/2's standard help file
viewer. If you aren't familiar with VIEW, click on the Help
button on the menu bar for additional information. You can
navigate through the help system with the mouse or keyboard,
using standard OS/2 conventions.

Under 4DOS/NT, F1 will start the standard Windows NT help
program. Use the Help button on the menu bar for additional
information. You can navigate through the help system with
the mouse or keyboard, using standard Windows conventions.

Now exit the help system (double click on the "close" box in
the upper left corner of the window, or use the Esc key in
4DOS). Then start entering a command:

c:\4dos> copy *.doc a: /

After that "/" you want to use the option that tells COPY to
prompt you before replacing an existing file, but you can't

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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 8

More About Files
-------------------------------------------------------------------

remember what it is. Just leave the command as it is and
press F1. The help system will display help on COPY, and
you'll see that the option you want is /R. Exit the help
system and you'll be right back on the command line. You can
type the R and press Enter to execute the command -- or press
Esc to clear the line without executing it.

There are many more features that can help you at the command
line. Most of them are described in Chapter 3 / Using 4DOS,
4OS2, and 4DOS/NT, in your Reference Manual.


More About Files

This section of the tour explores some additional features
that will help you manage files and directories. You're about
to use another batch file, TOUR2.BTM, to create some files
with which you can experiment. First, take a look at the
batch file with the LIST command:

c:\4dos> list tour2.btm

As you can see on your screen, LIST is a full screen file
viewer. You can scroll and page through the text. You may
notice that some lines near the end of the file extend beyond
the edge of your screen. To make the off-screen text visible
use the left and right arrows to scroll the display
horizontally, or press W to turn line wrapping on and off.
LIST also lets you search for text, print the file you're
viewing, and display the file in "hexadecimal" mode,
capabilities that we won't demonstrate on this tour. The file
TOUR2.BTM is simply a batch file that creates other files,
using the ECHO command. You don't have to worry about how it
works; we just used it to show you LIST. Press Esc to exit
List and return to the command line.

Now run TOUR2.BTM:

c:\4dos> tour2

Please wait ...

File creation completed

TOUR2 creates three files called FILE1, FILE2, and FILE3. The
contents of the files aren't important since we're just using
them for demonstration purposes. You'll be deleting and
recreating them several times during the rest of the tour.



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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 9

More About Files
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Now try the SELECT feature. SELECT lets you choose files for
any command from a full-screen list. We'll use it here to
delete one of the files that TOUR2 created. Enter the
command:

c:\4dos> select del (file*)

This lets you select from files that begin with the characters
"file", and pass the name of each selected file to the DEL
command for action.

The display on your screen includes a two-line header and then
the list of files, just as they'd look in a directory display.
Press the spacebar to "mark" the first file -- a triangular
mark will appear to the left of the file name. You can scroll
around in the display and mark and unmark files with the
spacebar as you like. When you hit Enter, the command will be
executed, deleting the files you've marked. For now, mark
FILE1 and leave the other files unmarked, so that FILE2 and
FILE3 are not deleted. You'll use them in the next step.

SELECT is also handy if you want to copy a group of files to a
floppy disk, perhaps to take your work home for the night or
to make a quick backup. If you'd like to try it, put a floppy
disk in drive A (it should be formatted, with at least 4K
bytes free). Then enter this command:

c:\4dos> select copy (file*) a:

Mark one or both of the files in the SELECT display, and the
marked file(s) will be copied to the floppy disk when you hit
Enter.

SELECT is a "prefix" command: it goes before another command
and modifies what that second command does. Another useful
prefix command is EXCEPT, which lets you do something except
to one or more files. Before you try EXCEPT, create new
copies of FILE1, FILE2, and FILE3 (TOUR2 will overwrite any
old copies of these files remaining from the last time it was
run):

c:\4dos> tour2
... ... ...

Now use EXCEPT to delete all but one of the files that TOUR2
created:

c:\4dos> except (file1) del file*
Deleting c:\4dos\file2
Deleting c:\4dos\file3

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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 10

More About Files
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2 file(s) deleted 4,096 bytes freed

The EXCEPT command protected FILE1 from being deleted. To
verify that, use the DIR command. When you're done, run TOUR2
one more time so the files are there for the next step.

Next, create two subdirectories within the current directory:

c:\4dos> md dira dirb

Notice that you can create both subdirectories with a single
command. Traditionally, you would have needed two MD commands
to do the same thing. To verify that the directories are
there, use DIR but ask it to display only subdirectories (/A:D
stands for "Attributes: Directory"):

c:\4dos> dir /a:d

Volume in drive C is JPS_TEST Serial number is ...
Directory of c:\4dos\*.*

. 10-14-93 14:21
.. 10-14-93 14:21
DIRA 12-13-93 10:23
DIRB 12-13-93 10:23
0 bytes in 4 file(s) 0 bytes allocated
18,608,128 bytes free

OK, things look right. Now move the demonstration files to
those directories, using the built-in MOVE command. This is
what you should type to move FILE1 to DIRA, and FILE2 and
FILE3 to DIRB:

c:\4dos> move file1 dira
c:\4dos\file1 -> c:\4dos\dira\file1
1 file(s) moved

c:\4dos> move file2 file3 dirb
c:\4dos\file2 -> c:\4dos\dirb\file2
c:\4dos\file3 -> c:\4dos\dirb\file3
2 file(s) moved

As usual, you can see exactly what has happened.

Now that you've created a subdirectory structure, it's time to
get a look at it. Use DIR's /S option to look for all the
files whose names begin with "file" in the current directory
and all of its subdirectories:

c:\4dos> dir /s file*

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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 11

More About Files
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Volume in drive C is JPS_TEST Serial number ...
Directory of c:\4dos\dira\file*.*

file1 22 12-13-93 10:37
22 bytes in 1 file(s) 2,048 bytes ...
18,587,648 bytes free

Total for: c:\4dos\dira\file*.*
22 bytes in 1 file(s) 2,048 bytes ...

Directory of c:\4dos\dirb\file*.*

file2 22 12-13-93 10:37
file3 1938 12-13-93 10:37
1,960 bytes in 2 file(s) 4,096 bytes ...
18,587,648 bytes free

Total for: c:\4dos\dirb\file*.*
1,960 bytes in 2 file(s) 4,096 bytes ...

Total for: c:\4dos\file*.*
1,982 bytes in 3 file(s) 6,144 bytes ...

DIR has displayed the directory header, filenames, and totals
for each of the two subdirectories that contain files matching
the name you entered, FILE*. It also has displayed a grand
total.

You've seen that DIR can look at several subdirectories at
once. Now do the same thing with DEL, and delete the files
you put in your demonstration subdirectories, along with the
subdirectories themselves, with a single command. To do so,
you need to use two options: /S and /X. The /S option tells
DEL to delete files in the current directory and all of its
subdirectories. The /X option makes DEL remove each
subdirectory if all the files within it are deleted:

c:\4dos> del /s/x dira dirb
c:\4dos\dira\*.* : Are you sure (Y/N/R)? Y
Deleting c:\4dos\dira\file1
c:\4dos\dirb\*.* : Are you sure (Y/N/R)? Y
Deleting c:\4dos\dirb\file2
Deleting c:\4dos\dirb\file3
3 file(s) deleted 6,144 bytes freed

Note the safety feature here. When you tell DEL to delete
DIRA and DIRB, they are recognized as directory names. DEL
assumes you mean "delete all files in this directory." Since
you're deleting all the files, DEL displays a prompt that

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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 12

Directory Navigation
-------------------------------------------------------------------

tells you what's about to be deleted and asks you whether you
really want to do the deletion. Once you answer Y the files
are deleted, and the subdirectory is automatically removed
(because you used the /X switch).

4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT also let you use file descriptions, so
you can describe a file's contents more clearly than with an
8-character file name. If you installed 4DOS from diskette,
you've seen some descriptions in your directory displays
already. The descriptions can be up to 40 characters long by
default, and may be extended up to 200 characters if you wish.

Run TOUR2 again to regenerate the three demonstration files.
Then use the DESCRIBE command to create a description for each
file (you can enter any description you like; you don't have
to use the text shown):

c:\4dos> tour2
c:\4dos> describe file*
Describe "c:\4dos\file1" : Tour file 1
Describe "c:\4dos\file2" : Tour file 2
Describe "c:\4dos\file3" : Tour file 3

Now look at the descriptions with a DIR command:

c:\4dos> dir file*
... ... ...

The descriptions will appear any time you ask for a standard,
single-column directory display. They will also appear when
you use the SELECT command. They can be a lifesaver when you
have files whose contents you can't remember, or when you have
large groups of files with similar names.


Directory Navigation

4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT make it easier to access files; they
also make it much more convenient to navigate through the hard
disk directory structure. You're probably already familiar
with the traditional CD command, which you use to change
directories. We've added a "go back" option to CD, which is
invoked by using the minus sign [-] instead of a directory
name. Try this:

c:\4dos> cd \
c:\> cd -
c:\4dos>



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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 13

Directory Navigation
-------------------------------------------------------------------

The CD - changes back to the directory you were in before the
most recent CD command. It's a convenient way to switch back
and forth between two directories. (Make sure you type at
least one space between CD and the minus sign.)

You can also change the drive and directory at the same time
with the CDD command, so you don't have to switch drives first
and then change directories. Here's an example using CDD.
Before you try it, put a floppy disk in drive A:

c:\4dos> cdd a:\
a:\> cdd -
c:\4dos>

As you can see, the minus works with CDD as well.

For more complex sequences of directory navigation, you can
use PUSHD and POPD. These commands maintain a directory
"stack" and let you make several changes, then move back
through the directories you've been to. They can change both
drive and directory, like CDD. For example:

c:\4dos> pushd a:\
a:\> pushd c:\
c:\> popd
a:\> popd
c:\4dos>

Now press Ctrl-PgUp (hold down the Ctrl key and then press the
PgUp key). You'll see a directory history window in the upper
right corner of your screen showing the directories you have
visited recently. You can move around this window with the
same keys you used earlier in the command history window.
When you find a directory that you want to move to, press
Enter to change to it. You can also press Ctrl-Enter to move
the directory name to the command line for editing.

We also offer a special environment variable, CDPATH, to help
you find the right directory without a lot of typing. CD,
CDD, and PUSHD use CDPATH to find the subdirectory you want to
change to if they can't find it in the current directory.
This can help a lot when you have long but commonly used
directory names. See the Reference Manual or online help for
complete details on CDPATH, and information on another
directory navigation feature, Automatic Directory Changes.






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Aliases
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Aliases

Aliases are one of the most powerful features in 4DOS, 4OS2,
and 4DOS/NT. Simple aliases are very easy to set up and use
(that's what we'll discuss here). Complex aliases allow you
to configure your system just about any way you want, and can
often take the place of small batch files.

The purpose of an alias is to rename or reconfigure a command.
Aliases are defined and viewed with the ALIAS command. In
this tour, we'll show you how to set up aliases for the DIR
command. Of course, you can use aliases to enhance any
command; for more examples see the ALIAS command in the
Reference Manual, and the sample file ALIASES that comes with
your command processor.

Here's a popular favorite for anyone who uses DIR and wants to
be able to use a simple D instead:

c:\4dos> alias d = dir

To see what aliases you've defined, enter ALIAS with no
parameters:

c:\4dos> alias
d=dir

To use the alias, just enter its name at the prompt, like any
command. In this case, you'll see a standard directory
display:

c:\4dos> d

Once you've defined an alias, you can use it anywhere a
command can be used: at the prompt, in a batch file, or
inside another alias.

As an example, build on the D alias you have already defined.
Suppose you regularly use 2-column directory listings,
discussed near the start of the tour. You can define an
alias, D2, to execute the DIR /2 command with the touch of a
couple of keys. Since you have already defined D, you can
define D2 separately, or so it uses the D alias (choose one
method to try):

c:\4dos> alias d2 = dir /2
c:\4dos> alias d2 = d /2

To use this alias, just type the command D2 and press Enter.
You can pass file names to these aliases just like you would

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Aliases
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to the original command. For example, D2 *.DOC will display
the .DOC files.

You can create aliases that are even easier to use with
keystroke aliases, which let you assign an Alt, Ctrl, or
Function key to an alias so you can invoke it by pressing a
single key. Say you'd like to assign the 2-column directory
display to F5. Just define an alias like D2, and make the
alias name the key name, with two at-signs [@@] before it:

c:\4dos> alias @@f5 = dir /2

Now press F5 and the DIR /2 command will be executed. You can
also create key aliases that don't execute when you press the
key, so you can type additional information on the line --
just use a single [@] sign at the start of the alias, instead
of two.

You can use an alias to redefine how a standard command works,
without changing its name. Suppose you always want DIR to
display its output in 2 columns, with a vertical sort and a
pause at the end of each page. You might think of using
something like this:

c:\4dos> alias dir = dir /2/p/v

Go ahead and try that, then do a DIR. You'll get an error:

c:\4dos> dir
Alias loop

c:\4dos>

The "alias loop" error is caused because the DIR command
inside your alias is interpreted as another attempt to run the
same alias. It's easy to change the alias so this doesn't
happen:

c:\4dos> alias dir = *dir /2/p/v

The [*] indicates that what follows should not be interpreted
as an alias. Try the definition above (you can scroll back to
the incorrect definition with up-arrow and modify it). Then
do a DIR and you'll see the results. Using this method, you
can redefine the default options for any internal command.

Aliases can contain multiple commands and can do much fancier
things than what you've seen here. They're great for creating
shorthand names for commonly used programs like your word
processor or database manager, and they will often load

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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 16

Other Commands
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programs faster as well -- if you put the full name of the
program in an alias, 4DOS doesn't need to search your PATH for
it (see the ALIAS command in the Reference manual or online
help for full details on this technique).


Other Commands

There are a few other commands that we'll just touch on, so
that you can see some of the other capabilities of 4DOS, 4OS2,
and 4DOS/NT.

First, turn on the LOG facility, which records all the
commands you enter. Enter the command:

c:\4dos> log /w mylog

You won't see anything else happen, but you've turned logging
on. We'll return to the log later.

A couple of commands let you control screen color. The
examples here will work on any system with a color video board
(the commands work on monochrome systems, too, but you're
restricted to the colors white and black). Try clearing the
screen to a specific color:

c:\4dos> cls bright white on magenta

Now let's set a different color:

c:\4dos> color bright yellow on blue

The behavior of the COLOR command varies depending on which
product you are using, and (under DOS) whether you have an
ANSI driver loaded. In some cases COLOR will change the color
of the entire screen immediately; in others, it only affects
the color of text displayed after it's executed, and not the
color of text already on the screen. You can experiment with
COLOR to see how it works on your system.

The FREE and MEMORY commands help you keep track of system
resources. FREE tells you about free space on your disk
drives (and is much faster than CHKDSK). MEMORY tells you
about memory resources, including available RAM, and internal
alias and history storage areas. Here are examples of the
output from our test system; try the commands on your system
and see what you get:




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Other Commands
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c:\4dos> free
Volume in drive C is JPS_TEST Serial number ...
41,826,304 bytes total disk space
23,232,512 bytes used
18,593,792 bytes free

c:\4dos> memory
655,360 bytes total DOS RAM
612,256 bytes free

7,815,168 bytes total EMS memory
688,128 bytes free

12,288 bytes free XMS memory (HMA in use)

1,792 bytes total environment
233 bytes free

6,144 bytes total alias
1,045 bytes free


1,024 bytes total history

The TIMER command lets you time events. The following line
also shows that 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT can accept multiple
commands on one line. (The character used to separate
commands is a caret [^] in 4DOS, as shown below. Use an
ampersand [&] in place of the caret if you are working with
4OS2 or 4DOS/NT.) This command starts the timer, runs the
TOUR2.BTM file to create the three demonstration files,
deletes the three files, and then stops the timer and displays
the how long the whole operation took. Enter this command to
time the entire sequence on your computer:

c:\4dos> timer ^ tour2 ^ del file* ^ timer
Timer 1 on: 11:10:01

Please wait ...

File creation completed
Deleting c:\4dos\file1
Deleting c:\4dos\file2
Deleting c:\4dos\file3
3 file(s) deleted
Timer 1 off: 11:10:06 elapsed: 0:00:05.11

Now return to the log that you started a few minutes ago.
Turn logging off, then take a look at what was recorded, using
these commands:


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Batch Files
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c:\4dos> log off
c:\4dos> list mylog

You'll see a full-screen display of the log file. It should
look something like this:

[12-13-93 11:05:02] cls bright white on magenta
[12-13-93 11:06:45] color bright yellow on blue
... ... ...
... (commands from TOUR2.BTM displayed here)
... ... ...
[12-13-93 11:12:35] log off

You can scroll through the log with the arrow keys and PgUp /
PgDn. Press Esc to exit when you've finished viewing the log.

As you can see, the log contains every command you entered
plus a date and time stamp. It's a complete record of system
activity, including commands you type and those entered from
batch files and aliases. You can use it as a record of your
work, for security purposes, or for anything else you desire.
You may want to clean up the directory now by deleting this
demonstration log with a DEL MYLOG command.


Batch Files

This final section demonstrates a few of the enhancements we
offer for your batch files. If you've never worked with batch
files, you may want to skip this section. If you aren't sure,
give it a try and stop if things seem too complex. You don't
have to be a batch file expert to use 4DOS, 4OS2, or 4DOS/NT.

Rather than having you write actual batch files, we'll
demonstrate some of the batch file features that work just as
well at the prompt.

Some batch file improvements aid in communicating with the
user. You can make sounds:

c:\4dos> beep 440 2 880 8 660 4

You can draw boxes and lines. Enter each of these commands on
one line; use the second set if you have a monochrome
monitor:

c:\4dos> cls bright white on blue
c:\4dos> drawbox 10 10 20 70 4 bright cyan on black
fill black
c:\4dos> drawhline 15 10 61 1 bright cyan on black

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Batch Files
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c:\4dos> cls bright white on black
c:\4dos> drawbox 10 10 20 70 4 black on white fill
white
c:\4dos> drawhline 15 10 61 1 black on white

Notice that these commands correctly connect the lines on the
screen where they intersect. Additional commands like SCREEN
and SCRPUT, which we won't demonstrate here, display text
anywhere on the screen and in any color.

You can also ask the user for input. Try this (be sure to use
two percent signs before the second "letter"):

c:\4dos> inkey Enter a letter: %%letter
Enter a letter: A

The letter you typed was stored in your environment in the
variable named LETTER. Use the SET command to view it:

c:\4dos> set
COMSPEC=C:\4DOS\4DOS.COM
... ... ...
LETTER=A

The user can also type full strings if you use the INPUT
command:

c:\4dos> input Enter a string: %%string
Enter a string: Type anything you like here ...

Again, SET will let you view the string, stored in the
environment variable STRING. INKEY and INPUT have many
additional options, including the ability to check for valid
keystrokes, and "time out" if you don't press a key within a
specified length of time.

Once you've collected some input, you can test it with the IF
and IFF commands. Here's one example. Enter this on one line
(there's plenty of room; command lines can be up to 255
characters long in 4DOS, and up to 1023 characters in 4OS2 and
4DOS/NT). Type ampersands [&] in place of the carets [^] if
you are using 4OS2 or 4DOS/NT.

c:\4dos> inkey Enter a letter: %%letter
^ iff "%letter" == "A" then ^ echo hello
^ else ^ echo goodbye ^ endiff

Try using the up-arrow to repeat the command several times,
giving different responses to the "Enter a letter" prompt.

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A Guided Tour of 4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT 20

Conclusion
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4DOS, 4OS2, and 4DOS/NT offer dozens of additional batch file
improvements. For more information see the Reference Manual
or online help.


Conclusion

This has been a very fast tour of some of the most popular
features of our enhanced command processors. There are many
more features, commands, and options to explore, as well as
ways to customize your system so that it suits your computing
habits and needs. One of the best features of 4DOS, 4OS2, and
4DOS/NT is their ability to adapt to your way of working
instead of requiring you to adapt to them.

If you selected "Tour Installation" when you ran the INSTALL
program, you will probably want to perform a full installation
now. You can put the distribution disk in your floppy drive,
run INSTALL, and follow the instructions on the screen. If
you need help, refer to the installation instructions in your
Introduction and Installation Guide.

To learn more about specific commands, look through the
Command Reference section of the Reference Manual, or the
individual commands in the online help. To learn more about
the dozens of features that aren't related to specific
commands, read through Chapter 3 / Using 4DOS, 4OS2, and
4DOS/NT in the Reference Manual, or browse through the online
help.






















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