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OT: Looking for a Utility

J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
I'm looking for a utility that can, in Windows Explorer, emulate the
DOS equivalent of:

copy header.ps+file1.ps+file2.ps+file3.ps+... +footer.ps total.ps

I can do this presently under a DOS window, but it's a pain, plus DOS
barfs on long filenames or spaces.

(I'm using this to merge numerous simulation outputs into a single
PostScript file, the run thru Acrobat to produce a PDF.)

...Jim Thompson
 
T

Tim Wescott

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
I'm looking for a utility that can, in Windows Explorer, emulate the
DOS equivalent of:

copy header.ps+file1.ps+file2.ps+file3.ps+... +footer.ps total.ps

I can do this presently under a DOS window, but it's a pain, plus DOS
barfs on long filenames or spaces.

(I'm using this to merge numerous simulation outputs into a single
PostScript file, the run thru Acrobat to produce a PDF.)

...Jim Thompson

Hopefully you'll find a better way, but:

Under Windows NT, 2000 and XP the DOS window understands long file names
if they're enclosed in quotes:

copy header.ps+"Gee this is a long file name.ps"+etc.ps total.ps

You could handle too-long command lines (which is more likely the
problem rather than long file names) by concatenating the files one by one:

copy header.ps+"Gee this is a long file name.ps" total.ps
copy total.ps+"Jim, why do you like long file names.ps" total.ps
etc.

If you do the runs over and over with the same set of files you can make
a batch file and set up a shortcut on your desktop so you can just
double click it to run.
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hopefully you'll find a better way, but:

Under Windows NT, 2000 and XP the DOS window understands long file names
if they're enclosed in quotes:

copy header.ps+"Gee this is a long file name.ps"+etc.ps total.ps

You could handle too-long command lines (which is more likely the
problem rather than long file names) by concatenating the files one by one:

copy header.ps+"Gee this is a long file name.ps" total.ps
copy total.ps+"Jim, why do you like long file names.ps" total.ps
etc.

If you do the runs over and over with the same set of files you can make
a batch file and set up a shortcut on your desktop so you can just
double click it to run.

I still remember all those DOS stunts, but I'd rather not ;-)

...Jim Thompson
 
S

Spehro Pefhany

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hopefully you'll find a better way, but:

Under Windows NT, 2000 and XP the DOS window understands long file names
if they're enclosed in quotes:

copy header.ps+"Gee this is a long file name.ps"+etc.ps total.ps

You could handle too-long command lines (which is more likely the
problem rather than long file names) by concatenating the files one by one:

copy header.ps+"Gee this is a long file name.ps" total.ps
copy total.ps+"Jim, why do you like long file names.ps" total.ps
etc.

If you do the runs over and over with the same set of files you can make
a batch file and set up a shortcut on your desktop so you can just
double click it to run.

Or use %1 in the batch file and Windows will substitute the name and
path of a file dropped on the icon.
 
C

Chuck Harris

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
I'm looking for a utility that can, in Windows Explorer, emulate the
DOS equivalent of:

copy header.ps+file1.ps+file2.ps+file3.ps+... +footer.ps total.ps

I can do this presently under a DOS window, but it's a pain, plus DOS
barfs on long filenames or spaces.

(I'm using this to merge numerous simulation outputs into a single
PostScript file, the run thru Acrobat to produce a PDF.)

...Jim Thompson

That simple job is why unix is the king of operating systems. DOS started
out trying to emulate some of the functions of the unix shell, and some
frustrated unix programmers even wrote unix shell simulators for DOS to
finish the job.

But when Gates' crew decided to copy the ideas the Apple guys copied from the
Xerox Parc guys, they abandoned all of the intelligent folks who understood
the true power of a command line driven shell program.

That is why I don't use 'doze, and do use linux. I get all of the advantages
of the windows like interface, and all of the advantages of the powerful unix
shell program side by side.

At this point, all of the major EDA tool houses are working on, or have already
deployed linux versions of their tools.

The rest will come around.

-Chuck (the linux zealot)
 
J

James Beck

Jan 1, 1970
0
I'm looking for a utility that can, in Windows Explorer, emulate the
DOS equivalent of:

copy header.ps+file1.ps+file2.ps+file3.ps+... +footer.ps total.ps

I can do this presently under a DOS window, but it's a pain, plus DOS
barfs on long filenames or spaces.

(I'm using this to merge numerous simulation outputs into a single
PostScript file, the run thru Acrobat to produce a PDF.)

...Jim Thompson
Look at some of these utilities.
I haven't tested any of them, but I just did a search for
"file concatenate utility" and several site came up.

http://www.nonags.com/nonags/filesplit.html

Jim Beck
 
T

Tom Del Rosso

Jan 1, 1970
0
Chuck Harris said:
But when Gates' crew decided to copy the ideas the Apple guys copied from the
Xerox Parc guys, they abandoned all of the intelligent folks who understood
the true power of a command line driven shell program.

Ahhh, Parc. They had workstations made from SSI and MSI, and ran GUIs with
Ethernet, and since RAM chips were unreliable they ran automatic diagnostics
at night so in the morning they knew what specific RAM chip to replace
before the user knew his station had a problem. Now we have systems that
halt on blue screens informing us of parity errors, but they (Windows, on
which I saw this happen yesterday) don't even think to say if it was in the
upper or lower half of memory, so you have to guess which module to replace,
then wait for the intermittent event to repeat.

That is why I don't use 'doze, and do use linux. I get all of the advantages
of the windows like interface, and all of the advantages of the powerful unix
shell program side by side.

Why (and the above is just an aside to this question :) ) do people say that
Linux isn't true Unix? What's it missing?
 
C

Chuck Harris

Jan 1, 1970
0
Tom said:
Ahhh, Parc. They had workstations made from SSI and MSI, and ran GUIs with
Ethernet, and since RAM chips were unreliable they ran automatic diagnostics
at night so in the morning they knew what specific RAM chip to replace
before the user knew his station had a problem. Now we have systems that
halt on blue screens informing us of parity errors, but they (Windows, on
which I saw this happen yesterday) don't even think to say if it was in the
upper or lower half of memory, so you have to guess which module to replace,
then wait for the intermittent event to repeat.

Look around, most of the RAM sold today doesn't even have a parity bit!
Bit failures occur right and left, and you don't have a clue unless it happens
to crash your machine. What do you suppose those occasional failed bits do
to the integrity of your data?
Why (and the above is just an aside to this question :) ) do people say that
Linux isn't true Unix? What's it missing?

It isn't missing anything. It is fully Posix compatible. But it isn't unix. To
be unix it needs to have a lineage that traces back to the old tapes from Western
Electric. The BSD's, Xenix, SCO, ... have that lineage, but linux, being written
from scratch doesn't.

-Chuck
 
T

Tim Wescott

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
I still remember all those DOS stunts, but I'd rather not ;-)

...Jim Thompson
The nice thing about the DOS stunts is they work now, they worked 20
years ago, and chances are they'll still work 20 years from now -- and
if they don't work from Microsoft, someone'll make them work with some
custom program. That's not a guarantee, but it's a heck of a lot
stronger than what you can expect from some graphical-based program that
has properties that make things grow...

I've switched between hardware, software and embedded systems design for
the last 15 years; I have _never_ released a piece of code to a
production system unless I could build it with a single (well, sometimes
two or three) well-defined commands from a DOS command line. Every time
I've tried to do development within an IDE, be it from Borland,
Microsoft, TI or whatever, the system has always thwarted my ability to
understand what was going on and hence insure that I could rebuild the
software 5 years in the future when something at an important old
customer site broke.
 
G

Genome

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim Thompson said:
I'm looking for a utility that can, in Windows Explorer, emulate the
DOS equivalent of:

copy header.ps+file1.ps+file2.ps+file3.ps+... +footer.ps total.ps

I can do this presently under a DOS window, but it's a pain, plus DOS
barfs on long filenames or spaces.

(I'm using this to merge numerous simulation outputs into a single
PostScript file, the run thru Acrobat to produce a PDF.)

...Jim Thompson

Charple,

I sort of got bored with downloading somethingspilt porn movie files as well
so I writ,wrot, something in Delphi4 that did it automagically.

Then I discovered that I had to watch blokes making breakfast and kissing a
lot before they started knobbing each other. Bloody waste of time if you ask
me.

Why can't your son do it for you?

DNA
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
[snip]
Charple,

I sort of got bored with downloading somethingspilt porn movie files as well
so I writ,wrot, something in Delphi4 that did it automagically.

Then I discovered that I had to watch blokes making breakfast and kissing a
lot before they started knobbing each other. Bloody waste of time if you ask
me.

Why can't your son do it for you?

DNA

That's the next step... just got to find something he needs to bribe
him with... pretty hard to do with a son who makes more than I do and
owns every electronic "toy" known to man.

He's heavily into live coral aquaria right now... maybe there's
something there he lusts for ;-)

...Jim Thompson
 
T

Tim Williams

Jan 1, 1970
0
Can always open in Notepad or Wordpad and paste in the pieces...

That's about the best Windows solution you can get, seems as tedious as the
command line process.

Tim
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Can always open in Notepad or Wordpad and paste in the pieces...

That's about the best Windows solution you can get, seems as tedious as the
command line process.

Tim

Nope, Not a bad idea at all!

UltraEdit has an "Insert File" function, with directory search.

That should do it just fine.

AND avoids the typo issues and limited viewing space in a DOS window
(and me having to remember the whole directory stack :)

THANKS, Tim!

...Jim Thompson
 
C

Chuck Harris

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
Nope, Not a bad idea at all!

UltraEdit has an "Insert File" function, with directory search.

That should do it just fine.

AND avoids the typo issues and limited viewing space in a DOS window
(and me having to remember the whole directory stack :)

THANKS, Tim!

...Jim Thompson

The only problem is when after the 10th file in your concatenation
stream, you forget whether the next is the 10th, or the 11th.

One postscript program looks just like another...

It is always better to have the list of instructions the computer
is going to use sitting in front of you for review.

-Chuck
 
D

Don Taylor

Jan 1, 1970
0
Chuck Harris said:
Look around, most of the RAM sold today doesn't even have a parity bit!
Bit failures occur right and left, and you don't have a clue unless it happens
to crash your machine. What do you suppose those occasional failed bits do
to the integrity of your data?

When the reliability of the OS is many orders of magnitude worse than
the reliability of the RAM, the RAM contribution really doesn't matter.

Show an OS that has 1 failure per 2000 customers using it full time
24 hours a day for a year and then maybe RAM failures become an issue.

That is like two dozen of your friends all using Windows for fifty
years and there being a 95% chance that not a one of you had ever seen
a single bug, no matter how small, or even hidden by the OS to help you.
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
The only problem is when after the 10th file in your concatenation
stream, you forget whether the next is the 10th, or the 11th.

One postscript program looks just like another...

It is always better to have the list of instructions the computer
is going to use sitting in front of you for review.

-Chuck

In UltraEdit you are actually pasting in the text file right in front
of your eyes, plus you can always look into the "Recent Files" list
within UltraEdit.



...Jim Thompson
 
T

Ted Edwards

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
I'm looking for a utility that can, in Windows Explorer, emulate the
DOS equivalent of:

copy header.ps+file1.ps+file2.ps+file3.ps+... +footer.ps total.ps

If you dumped 'doze and ran OS/2 or eCS, you could type that line into
an OS/2 command line and hit enter right from the desktop. You could
even shorten up the process using ZTree. OS/2 runs that stuff with far
less fuss than 'doze.

Ted
 
P

Pooh Bear

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jim said:
I still remember all those DOS stunts, but I'd rather not ;-)

Oh come on it's great fun. You need to keep your hand in !

See my post elsewhere about using debug to do a low level format. Just needs 2
lines to be typed in. One of which is debug < enter >.

God knows what it would do now. I'm not risking it. Probably still works.

Graham
 
J

Joop

Jan 1, 1970
0
Chuck Harris said:
The only problem is when after the 10th file in your concatenation
stream, you forget whether the next is the 10th, or the 11th.

One postscript program looks just like another...

It is always better to have the list of instructions the computer
is going to use sitting in front of you for review.

-Chuck

Why don't you create a small .cmd or .bat file that does the copy for
a single file? Just append a file (copy total.ps to tmp.ps, then the
new+tmp to total again)
The new file (%1) can be given to the command file by dropping the
fileX.ps onto it.
Assuming drag and drop is fine for you. Still one file a time, but not
typing anymore.

Cheers,

Joop
 
C

Chuck Harris

Jan 1, 1970
0
Don said:
When the reliability of the OS is many orders of magnitude worse than
the reliability of the RAM, the RAM contribution really doesn't matter.

Show an OS that has 1 failure per 2000 customers using it full time
24 hours a day for a year and then maybe RAM failures become an issue.

That is like two dozen of your friends all using Windows for fifty
years and there being a 95% chance that not a one of you had ever seen
a single bug, no matter how small, or even hidden by the OS to help you.

Since a crash is about the only way to tell a single bit error has occurred
in memory, I guess ignorance is bliss.

Your attempt at characterizing the error rates of RAM are interesting, but
my own personal experience has had me swap out error prone memory
sticks with good result. Something that shouldn't be possible if the RAM
was really as reliable as you seem to think it is.

-Chuck
 
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