HO

USAGE: HO "command" <filespecs> <options> Options are CASE SENSITIVE. Command Variables: @n name, @f full path, @p path, @d drive, @r file root, @e extension, @'prompt' ask user, @l last @'prompt' Execution Options: v=<verbosity>, /s subdirectories, -c Don't change directories, /q Query, /d do DIRECTORY names, /x Use spawn(), /b Fast mode, w=<batchfilename>, P=<environment variable> /r Regular Expressions File Selectivity: x=<Exclude FileSpec>, a=<ARSH> match attributes, a!<ARSH> exclude attributes, a$<ARSH> include attributes, a+<ARSH> special include, d write date, l access date, c created, s size Comparison Operators: = equal to, } greater than or equal, { less than or equal Example: ho "del @n" *.dat *.txt /q /s Execute delete on every file fitting *.dat, and *.txt. Ask the user to confirm each deletion (/q) and do the same with like files in subdirectories (/s). HO's purpose is to automate tedious file operations. HO is an extremely expanded version of the batch file DO command. HO was first written to handle the problem of programs which could only handle one file at a time. For example, an editor which could only accept one text file: EDIT DOCUMENT.TXT By using HO, one could enable that editor to sequentially edit multiple files: HO "EDIT @N" *.TXT This means, "Do the EDIT command on every file matching *.TXT". The @N becomes each full file name in turn that matches *.TXT. HO will perform a command line on every file that matches a spec. You give it a command line using normal characters and some special ones that get replaced during execution. The command line is what you want done on each of the files. This command line MUST be enclosed in quotes. If you need to have quotes as part of the command, precede them with a backslash, i.e. \" Variable Description Example ------------------------------------------------------------------------ @n file name command.com @f full path and name OS2\mdos\command.com @p path/directory only OS2\mdos @d drive letter C: @r file root ( no extension ) command @e file extension com GENERAL OPTIONS Multiple <filespec> are allowed, if no <filespec>, file names will be taken from standard input. Files coming in from standard input are assumed to be "ready to go" and are not screened for date, attribute or any other criteria. This means that lines coming in on stdin can be any text, not just file names, for HO to work on. Any string given on the command line that HO does not have a special meaning for, will be interpreted as a file specification. v=<verbosity> HO Level 1 - 10 how talkative should HO be, 0-silent, 10-highest. High HO is useful for telling you what the heck is going on when behavior isn't what you expect. +s or /s Do subdirectories also. -c Don't change directories when executing commands. IMPORTANT: HO will change its default directory to the directory of the file it is working on unless you use the -c option. Without -c, @n and @f both expand to the name of the file without any directory. If -c is used then @f gives a full/relative path to the file. @n still only expands to the file name. +q or /q Ask before each command is executed. +d or /d Only do DIRECTORY names. +x or /x Execute by spawn() instead of system(). Doesn't use CMD.EXE to execute commands. Works faster but has less syntactical power. Shell capabilities such as redirection ( < > or | ) and others are NOT understood. +b or /b Write a cmd (batch) file and execute it all at once. MUCH!!! faster if your operations are mainly shell commands. HO automagically creates the batch file, executes it and deletes it when done executing. w=<batchfilename> like /b except it saves the created batch file in the specified name. P=<environment variable> HO will work each directory contained in the environment variable ( PATH, DPATH, INCLUDE, etc ) you specify. +r or /r HO will use unix style Regular Expressions to match files. If you use this options, you MUST use / instead of \ in your filespecs. This is because Regular Expressions use \ as a special character. HO treats / just like \ when it comes to directory specs. Regular expressions, designed under unix, use many characters that can confuse the OS/2 command shell. You may occasionally have to put your regular expressions within quotes so that OS/2 doesn't interpret them wrong. example: ho "del @n" /r "[0-9]+*" x=<Exclude FileSpec> HO will exclude files matching this spec. Up to 50 Exclude FileSpecs are allowed. This option only works if Regular Expressions are enabled. ATTRIBUTE SELECTION These options let you select files based on attributes A = Archive R = Read Only S = System H = Hidden Specified like this for example: a$RSH a= To be selected, file must exact match these attributes a! If file has ANY of these it is excluded a$ If file has ANY of these it is selected a+ all normally visible files plus H or R if specified You can select by dates and sizes also using the following symbols. Symbol Meaning Example -------------------------------------------------------------------------- d last write date d}2/1/93 write dated on or after 2/1/93 l last access date l{12:00:00 accessed before noon today c created date c{12/16/86 created before 12/16/86 s size s}300000 size greater than 300000 bytes = equal to l=10:00 } greater than or equal c}7/9/87 { less than or equal to s{5 Note: Curly Braces are used rather than the obvious > and < because those would tell the command interpreter to redirect input or output. One equal or one greater and one less than are allowed. In other words, it doesn't do you much good to specify files dated equal to 1/1/95 and greater than ( after ) 2/1/95. But you CAN have identical comparisons in different categories. d=1/1/95 together with l=2/1/95 and s=3000 is valid. Times and dates are represented together as a string of the form MM/DD/YY-HH:MM:SS. The separation characters are pretty flexible, any non-numeric characters will do. If you put a space between the date and the time, be sure to enclose the entire date/time in parenthesis or else they will be interpreted as separate parameters. Time/Date values will match all files that fit within resolution. For example, if you specify d=12/1/1996-12, this will match all files with last write date 12/1/1996 in the 12 o'clock hour, regardless of minute or second. Just specifying a time, c=7:00 for example, assumes TODAY'S date. You can enter times relative to now also. Using the words, last, next startof, tomorrow, yesterday, minute, hour, day, month, year, this and now. For example, d=now, would be interpreted as d=the time and date right now. d=startoflastweek would be interpreted as midnight of last Sunday. MULTIPLE COMMANDS and CONDITIONAL EXECUTION Multiple commands can be executed by separating them with a semi-colon (;). You may also prefix subcommands with a question mark if you want to query the user about just that particular subcommand (vs /q for the entire command). & works just like the question mark except that a NO response will terminate processing of that entire group of subcommands. HO "view @n;&copy @n d:\docs;?describe d:\docs\@n" *.doc This would "view" each file, ask the user if she wanted to copy the file and then ask her for a description of each file. If she answered NO to the "copy" subcommand, HO would not execute the "describe" subcommand because copy is preceded with a &, not a ?. Note: the ? or & must come immediately after the semicolon (;?). You can change the ; separation character to any characters of your liking with the S= option, example: HO "copy @n a:\$attrib +r a:\@n" *.* S=$ UPPERCASE AND PROMPT There some additional advanced variables you can put in the command line. Variable Description Expands to ------------------------------------------------------------------------ @'prompt' prompt user special - asks for value @N file name COMMAND.COM @F full path and name OS2\MDOS\COMMAND.COM @P directory only OS2\MDOS @D drive letter C: @R file root ( no extension ) COMMAND @E file extension COM @l response to last @'prompt' @N, @F etc. are simply upper case versions of previously mentioned @symbols. The @'prompt' lets you ask the user for a value when HO executes: HO "ren @n @'New Name?'" *.* - This would ask for a value to rename the file to. EXAMPLES HO "copy @f b:" c:\os2\*.exe d}2/20/93 copy all *.exe files in the \os2 directory, dated after or on 2/20/93 to b: HO "ren @n @'new file name'" *.* v=5 go through each file in the directory and ask the user for a new name. Since verbosity is 5 ( v=5 ), HO will print a lot of information about what is happening to the screen. HO "del \"@n\"" /q <filelist.txt delete all files whose names are in the file filelist.txt The /q would also cause the user to be asked yes or no to each deletion. Notice the @n is surrounded by quotes. The backslashes are needed so that HO will not think the first " is the end of the command. HO "copy @n b:\old\@n;?del @n" *.* s}300000 a=rh copy all read-only hidden files sized 300000 or over to b:\old then delete them. User will be asked yes/no/all/quit for the delete since del is preceded by a ?. HO "edit @n" P=INCLUDE *.h will edit every file header file in every directory contained in your INCLUDE environment variable HO "copy @n a:" *.* a+HR Copy all files to a: including Hidden and System files HO "copy @f a:\archive\@f" *.txt c}today-2 -c /s copy all *.txt files in this directory and subdirectories onto a similar directory structure on the a: under the directory archive. Don't change directories ( -c ) as you recurse down subdirectories because you need to use the relative pathname ( @f ) to copy to the proper relative path on the a: drive Copy the files only if they were created within the last two days ( c}today-2 ) ho "dir @n;?del @n" l{thismonth e:\*.* /s Go through all files on the e:\ drive ( e:\*.* ) and all its subdirectories ( /s ), selecting those files whose date of last access is less than the first of this month ( l{thismonth ). Display the file's data ( dir @n ), and then ask the user if he wants to delete the file ( ?del @n ) Historical Note: HO got its name from the ex who "done X to every guy in town fitting specification Y"