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GZIPDATE.REX (uses TOUCH) (Developers)

posted by Arjay, 11.03.2010, 17:09

> However, the main issue I have with it (among other touch utils) is that
> none seem to allow touching a read-only file! Why? I can't imagine that's
> really a worthwhile protection. At least two (DR-DOS' TOUCH.EXE and 4DOS's
> built-in TOUCH) support overriding it (/R or /F, respectively) but most
> others don't (even Charles Dye's improved version).
FYI, PC Magazine also created 2 touch utils which were available as follows:
touch.com (v7n07.zip) - assembler version with soruce by Michael J. Mefford
touchw.exe (v8n02.zip) - C version by ?? (C ver doesn't like readonly files!)

I only ever used Michael J. Mefford version which from memory never had any problems with read-only files. As for the later C version I have only just come across it whilst relocating these files now and according to the C source it doesn't handle readonly files.... it looks rubbish in comparism to Micheal's earlier assembler version - all of his work was always great IMHO!

But sadly I am not going to link to either. Why? Well in the past PC Mag utils were distributed not only with their magazines and but also widely across Bulletin Boards and ftp sites like simtel.net. Sadly getting hold of PC Mags early utils now days is no longer easy. The reason why if my memory serves me correctly is comes down the publisher of PC Mag (Ziff Davis) deciding in the mid 90's to contact simtel (and mirrors) and legally ask them to remove all the PC Mag utils which at the time were widely available. Thus you will find their utils coming back in most cases but without the underlying files which were removed.

I was never a contacted directly myself but remember this all vaguely as I ran a BBS distributing demos
and also mirroring a lot of Simtel content using Walnut creek's CD-ROM's designed for that purpose!

I seem to remember PC Mag's utils may have then been available online on their website to "existing" PC Magazine customers via their archive but as I'm not an existing customer I don't know if this is indeed still the case.

I was fortunately also a regular PC Mag customer in the past who purchased several years worth of their magazines with their coverdisks. In otherwords I have own legal original copies of their utils in addition to CD-ROM's etc.


> There's also no common way to easily preserve file attributes before
> touching in order to be restored afterwards either,

Hmmm, noted. Remind me of this again in the future for RJDOS (or whatever it might be renamed to) as I'm planning/working on some similiar save/restore features which I could re-implement for attributes etc. In short what I'm working to include (long term) is things like save interrupts, run process, restore interrupts - why? Well for several reasons: 1) provide features to *flag* this type of behaviour. 2) To help provide work arounds for bugs.
Importantly I'm planning to do this across DOS versions as much as possible.

Still back to touch....


> if not creating a new file (which -C forbids), why open for read/write
> (3D02)??
No doubt for safety, since read-only is effectively saying "don't touch me".


> Feedback welcome. :-)
> debug touch2.com < %0
I seem to remember this may fail on some (newer?) DOS shells and you need to do %0.bat on those otherwise the file is NOT found. I can't remember off the top of my head what/where but I definately remember running into that problem.

Last time I ran into this I seem to remember writting lines to test and try both, e.g. something like this (note basic "concept" code below not actual):

if exist .\%0 call debug <%0
if exist .\%0.bat call debug <%0.bat

that way trapping both instances and still allowing ppl to rename the BATch.
As above I can't remember which DOS shell or how/why off the top of my head and the above code is just a non-working example to provide an example.

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