OT: Looking for a Utility

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

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.

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

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

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)

the

understood

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.

advantages

unix

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

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

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?

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

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

-- "California is the breakfast state: fruits, nuts and flakes." Website:

More precisely: Ctrl-End, Alt-F, U, I

Just make it a Macro ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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

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.

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

I lurked on the PostScript group and begged assistance. The trick is in the line above beginning "copy..."

header.ps and footer.ps set and reset magical things to allow concatenation of the files listed in between....

header.ps:

%% %% First things first, we set up the letter tray. Of course %% if you wanted another tray, you could change this... %% [{ %%BeginFeature: *PageSize Letter statusdict /lettertray get exec %%EndFeature } stopped cleartomark

%% %% Windows drivers stick a 'control-d' at the end of jobs. This causes %% many interpreters to think its the end of job (hang over from serial %% communication days). So, we define an operator called /4 which does %% nothing. %% (\\004) cvn {} bind def

%% %% lettertray does different things on different interpeters. On Jaws %% it just changesd the page size, on Adobe it seems to erase the page %% too. Since we've already set it up once, its safe to zap the %% definition. %% statusdict begin /lettertray {} bind def end

%% %% Now we store the *original* definitions of the operators we are %% about to change, in case we need them... %% /Mysetpagedevice /setpagedevice load def /Myshowpage /showpage load def

%% %% Now, we make sure that the job can't change our setup, which might %% cause graphics state resets and other embarrasments. %% /setpagedevice {pop} bind def

%% %% we redefine showpage so that it does nothing, this means that the %% next 'page' will overlay the current page. %% /showpage {} bind def

footer.ps:

%% %% Lastly we emit the *original* showpage definition to 'show' the page %% Myshowpage

I'll look back some years thru my notes and see if I can't provide proper attribution to the original author.

Enjoy.

...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.

Jim Beck

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

Ctrl-End takes you right to the end of the current file, so Ctrl-End-Alt-F-U-I will get the cursor positioned at the end of the current file and ready to insert a new file.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

How many levels deep does that stack go? Suppose you have been doing this quite alot, and you have a stream of 30 recently opened files in the stack. It can become quite a challange to pick out the beginning file and the middle files from all of the clutter of the earlier jobs. Can you clean it out anytime you like?

cat file1 file2 file3 ... filen > bigfile

is so clean and easy. So is:

cp file1 + file2 + ... + filen bigfile

Cutting and pasting in the editor is a kludge, and as such is highly prone to errors. It is the kind of thing I do when I am feeling lazy and don't want to think. I always get bit in the a$$ when I am feeling lazy and don'w want to think.

-Chuck

I use Concat.

Works pretty well. In Windows Explorer, you select the files you want to concatenate, right-click on the first one, select Concatenate, and away you go.