GM> Most people worry about saving a file; I like to worry about
  > saving a little description because I dislike repetitive typing.
 That's why we use aliases and batch files.  Since this is
 already a batch file, it's easy to deal with it there, by doing
 a global redescription.  Just stick a "describe" command after
 the part where you run TB.
GM> This could be because of my alias for one of the DIR
  > commands -- uses some switches and a pipe command...
 Do you have Tmp and Temp and Temp4Dos set?  Those should do the
 pipe files in that dir, usually a ramdrive.  Otherwise it does
 get done in the current dir, which would mean there's a file
 deletion that would affect the descriptions.
GM> Yes.  It's just too much bother to "customize"
  > the description for every directory.  
 Not really.  Use variables.  To get "d:\msg\qwk's virus file"
 or a variant, use        describe %trash "%_cwd's virus file"
 in the batch file.
GM> I haven't tried the above command because I'm not sure
  > how it could be used.  Perhaps a small BTM example...
 It's just parsing output.  If I do
 ffind /a:h /v /t"puppet" descript.ion > k:\!
 I get a five-line file:         0:
                                 1: ---- f:\win\descript.ion
 I can then parse that           2: puppet_6.bmp Pierson's Puppeteer
 file however I want to          3:
 get individual pieces           4:   1 line in      1 file
 from it.  Easily if it's
 a standard format always returned by a command, more difficultly
 if I have to search the whole thing for the piece I want.  This
 one is easy:
                 %@word[-1,[%@line[k:\!,%@lines[k:\!]]]
                    |          |            |
     returns word from a line  |     number of lines in file
                               |
                         returns specified
                           line in file
 So %lines says "4 lines in file" (it counts from 0, like most 4DOS
 variables), and %@line uses that number to say "  1 line in      1 file"
 and %@word uses "-1" to get the second word counting from the right to
 get the "1" in front of "file".  You parse these things from the
 innermost brackets outward.
... I have great faith in fools -- self-confidence my friends call it.
--- SR 2.00 #1019  -!-  Edgar Allen Poe
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