Announcing the
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OS/2 Command Line Utilities version 2.0
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The OS/2 Command Line Utilities, OS2CLU, version 2.0 comprises a suite of
native 32-bit OS/2 commands that provide many useful abilities for the
OS/2 user, from searching archive files and subdirectories for filenames,
through searching text files for patterns, to improved versions of several
of the commands that are supplied with OS/2 itself that allow one to
remove more of the 16-bit vestiges that remain in OS/2 Warp.
They are "command line" utilities because they can all be driven from the
command line, making them suitable for use in command scripts ("batch
files"). However, OS2CLU comprises a mixture of text-mode and
Presentation Manager (i.e. graphical) programs.
FEATURES
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� All of the utilities are fully 32-bit native OS/2 programs, written to
take advantage of many of the features of 32-bit OS/2, such as its
ability to scan directories efficiently.
� 27 new commands that weren't in OS2CLU version 1.0: ANACLOCK, ARCDIR,
BCOMP, CALCTZ, COMP, CPUIDG, CPUIDT, DELTREE, DIGCLOCK, DIRSIZE, FIND,
FINDDUPS, FITSIZE, HELP, PARTLIST, RESETINI, SAYDATE, SETDATE, SORT,
STRINGS, SUM, TASKLIST, TEE, TEXTCONV, TREE, WINSIGHT, and Y.
� All of the utilities that deal with dates are fully capable of handling
dates beyond the year 2000, beyond the year 2038 -- which is the "drop
dead" date for much 32-bit C and C++ code --, and right up to the year
2107, in fact.
Ironically, this ability in the TOUCH and XDIR commands has revealed two
Year 2100 bugs in OS/2's own FAT and HPFS filesystem drivers!
� All of the utilities that deal with files support extended wildcards,
which are a superset of the standard OS/2 wildcard syntax, similar to
the wildcards that are available in most UNIX shells.
For example:
[c:\]attrib +r *.{zip,arj,rar,lzh,tar.gz}
and
[c:\]xdir [a-c]*
and
[c:\]dump /s *.{su,mo,tu,we,th,fr,sa}[0-9]
� Several of the utilities are 32-bit replacements for commands supplied
with OS/2 itself that are *still*, even in OS/2 Warp version 4, 16-bit
programs or batch files, such as ATTRIB, COMP, FIND, HELP, SORT, and
TREE.
Needless to say, many of the uglier "features" of the OS/2-supplied
commands have been removed. The OS2CLU SORT command, for example, can
sort files named on the command line as well as its standard input, and
can sort files that are greater than 64KiB in size. The OS2CLU COMP
command can be used in a batch file with ease. The OS2CLU FIND command
supports regular expressions and the ability to be used in a command
pipeline. The OS2CLU HELP command can be configured to search different
on-line books by default and won't destroy a customised command prompt
if one turns help on and off. And the OS2CLU TREE command, unlike the
TREE supplied with OS/2, *actually displays a tree*!
� The command-line interface to all of the utilities is straightforward
and consistent, and is based on conventions that will be familiar to PC
users.
For example, all of the utilities support the /? option for obtaining
help; and the /S option always means "recurse into subdirectories",
whatever the command.
� The utilities come with a detailed on-line help document, in the
standard OS/2 INF file format.
� The DUMP, FIND, GREP, SORT, STRINGS, SUM, TEE, TEXTCONV, WC, WHAT, and Y
commands can be used as filter commands, for use in a command pipeline,
acting upon what they receive from their standard input, and producing
results on their standard output.
� All of the utilities contain international support, displaying the date
and time in the format appropriate to the current setting given for
COUNTRY in CONFIG.SYS, and using OS/2's system message file for the text
of error messages.
� All of the utilities that deal with dates and times can also use the ISO
8601 standard date and time representation, which uses an unambiguous
format with a 4-digit year, in order to avoid the inherent ambiguity in
the "national" date formats for the first 31 years of the 21st century
(e.g. 01/02/03).
� The SAYDATE and DIGCLOCK utilities fully support the TZ environment
variable, with the standard POSIX syntax (ISO/IEC 9445-1:1990), allowing
one to operate in any timezone, in either hemisphere, with daylight
savings time rules being applied correctly and automatically.
This also allows different commands to be run in different timezones.
So one could have, if one wanted, multiple instances of DIGCLOCK running
on the desktop at the same time, all operating in different timezones
and with different daylight savings time rules! A fully configurable
and extensible "world clock"!
� All utilities are limited only by available virtual memory.
The DIR command in CMD, the default command processor supplied with
OS/2, refuses to sort a directory listing containing more than 2073
files. The DIR command in 4OS2 fails when the directory size reaches a
more respectable 20,000 files.
But the XDIR command in OS2CLU was able, in testing, to sort a directory
listing of 100,000 files, and even that didn't reach its limit! (We
just ran out of enthusiasm to go any higher. (-:)
� All of the utilities that deal with files fully support long filenames,
filenames with embedded spaces and multiple full stops, deep directory
trees, and large directories.
Indeed, the TREE command was added to OS2CLU version 2.0 because one of
the popular TREE utilities for OS/2 couldn't handle the C:\OS2\ARCHIVES
directory tree and would always crash because it was too deep!
� All of the utilities that deal with files fully support the Universal
Naming Convention, used by LANs and by OS/2 Warp Server 5 ("Aurora").
For example, one doesn't need to use drive letters to access files on
LAN fileservers, since one can use UNC filenames instead:
[c:\]ff /s/e \\server\sharename\*.txt
and
[c:\]xdir \\server\sharename\*.{exe,com,cmd}
� All of the text-mode utilities can be used when OS/2 is booted to a
text-mode command line.
THE INDIVIDUAL UTILITIES
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ANACLOCK A simple Presentation Manager analogue clock program, with
full support for timezones and automatic (and effortless)
switching to and from daylight savings time.
ARCDIR Displays the contents of archives. It performs much the
same function as the "l" or "-view" option to many
archiving tools, except that one tool supports multiple
archive types with one uniform command syntax, can list
files within the archive matching particular wildcards,
can sort the listing, and can even produce a single
(sorted) list of the contents of multiple archive files
that match a particular wild card, optionally recursing
into subdirectories to find them.
ATTRIB Is an enhanced, 32-bit, replacement for OS/2's 16-bit
ATTRIB command. It includes, amongst other enhancements,
extended wildcards, the ability to include and exclude
files by attribute, and the ability to modify the
attributes of subdirectories as well as files.
BCOMP A simple binary byte-for-byte comparison of two files.
CALCTZ A Presentation Manager utility to help calculate the TZ
environment variable string for any given timezone and
daylight savings time rules. Unlike other TZ calculators,
this command calculates a TZ string that is in the
standard POSIX 1003.1 (ISO/IEC 9445-1:1990) format.
COMP Is an enhanced, 32-bit, replacement for OS/2's 16-bit COMP
command. It doesn't prompt the user, so can be used in
command scripts, and has a more compact output format so
that differences are easier to spot. It can also recurse
into subdirectories to compare entire directory trees; and
it supports extended wildcards.
CONVCASE Renames filenames to upper, lower, or mixed case, which is
handy in those situations where other programs insist upon
creating all-uppercase or all-lowercase filenames. It
supports the standard OS2CLU features of recursing into
subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute,
and extended wildcards.
CPUIDG A Presentation Manager program to display the information
obtained about the CPU by the CPUID instruction, including
the various AMD and Cyrix extensions.
CPUIDT A text-mode program to display the information obtained
about the CPU by the CPUID instruction, including
the various AMD and Cyrix extensions.
DELTREE A REXX wrapper script for the XDEL command that behaves
much like the DELTREE command in MS-DOS and DR-DOS does.
DIGCLOCK A simple Presentation Manager digital clock program, with
a fully configurable display format and full support for
timezones and automatic (and effortless) switching to and
from daylight savings time.
DIRSIZE Displays the sizes of directories, much like the GNU `du'
command does, but with the standard OS2CLU features such
as enhanced wildcards and the ability to include/exclude
files by attribute, and with the same simple, consistent,
PC-style, interface of the other utilities that should be
familiar to OS/2 users. It also displays the actual true
"allocated space" figures when used on large FAT volumes.
DUMP Dumps the contents of many types of file, including the
popular ARC, ARJ, LZH, RAR, ZIP, and ZOO archive file
formats, PKT files (used for mail transfer on Fidonet),
executable and DLL files, and Intel object module files
(OBJ and LIB files).
FF A versatile yet simple and fast file finder, that is also
capable of locating files that are contained within ARC,
ARJ, LZH, RAR, ZIP, and ZOO archives. It supports the
standard OS2CLU features of recursing into subdirectories,
including/excluding files by attribute, and extended
wildcards.
FIND A REXX wrapper for the GREP command that can replace
OS/2's 16-bit FIND command, searching for lines in text
files that contain a given string. It has the standard
OS2CLU features of being able to operate recursively on
files in subdirectories and include/exclude files by
attribute. It can also has a "brief" display format, and
the ability to display counts of the number of lines
found.
FINDDUPS Locates files that are exact duplicates of one another,
even if they have different names and timestamps. It
supports the standard OS2CLU features of recursing into
subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute,
and extended wildcards.
FITSIZE Groups files into bundles that don't exceed a given total
size. It is useful for burning CD-ROMs, or collecting
files onto LS-120 super-floppy discs.
GREP Finds lines that match a given pattern in text files, much
like the GNU `egrep' command, but with the standard OS2CLU
features. It implements almost the entire POSIX "extended"
regular expression syntax -- far more than most other grep
utilities, which usually only provide the POSIX "basic"
syntax.
HELP An enhanced, REXX, replacement for OS/2's HELP command
(which is a "batch file"). It won't upset customised
PROMPT strings, and doesn't require the 16-bit HELPMSG
program in order to function. It also allows the command
reference on-line book that is used by default to be
configured via the CMDREF environment variable.
It is also useful as a replacement for the HELP command
that is built in to Take Command for OS/2, JP Software's
command interpreter for OS/2, which doesn't work too well!
PARTLIST Displays the entire, unmodified, contents of the partition
table on one or all of the available partitionable disc
devices. Unlike FDISK /QUERY, the partition table is
displayed in raw uninterpreted form, with the partition
sizes displayed in numbers of sectors, rather than being
converted to KiB.
The /FIX option will fix some of the more common errors
caused by disc geometry changes (which can occur when a
disc is moved from one machine to another or when a
different make of SCSI host adapter is used, for example).
PLAYTUNE Plays a tune through the PC speaker. No more messing
around converting a tune to a series of numbers for BEEPs!
And no more need to run QBASIC in a VDM, which eats CPU
time, just to play a tune! The tune is given in a format
compatible with the "PLAY" statement in the BASIC language
and with so-called "ANSI music" as used by several BBS and
offline mail and comms utilities.
RESETINI Removes the read-only attribute from the user and system
INI files, and then instructs Workplace Shell to reload
them. It is useful as an aid to recovery if an incomplete
shutdown has left the INI files read-only by accident. It
also has the side-effect of closing and re-opening the WPS
Desktop folder without restarting the system.
SAYDATE Displays the current, or any given, date and time, with a
--- FleetStreet 1.22 NR
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* Origin: JdeBP's point, using Squish (1:109/921.70)
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