Message-ID: <32422D22.3688@cs.com> Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 22:35:30 -0700 From: "John M. Aldrich" Reply-To: fighteer AT cs DOT com Organization: Three pounds of chaos and a pinch of salt MIME-Version: 1.0 To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: Fileutils 3.13 ported References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Eli Zaretskii wrote: > > The source distribution of GNU Fileutils 3.13 ported to DJGPP is being > uploaded to DJ's server /incoming/ directory as I write this. Please try > them, especially on Windows 95, whenever they are in the download area, > and tell me about any problems you see. I have a question for the development team re: the fileutils ports. Is any version of the 'whence' utility planned for release in a DJGPP- compiled format? I don't know if this is a GNU utility or merely one common to Unix systems, but I have not seen it in any GNU package that I've looked at. Alternatively, has anyone attempted or is anyone willing to attempt a direct port to DJGPP/MS-DOS? The reason I ask this is because I have received several responses to my offer to distribute the 'whence'-like utility I wrote for DJGPP several months ago. Although it functions as closely to the operation of Unix whence as I could make it without a Unix system to compare to, it is still an original program and not a port. However, there does appear to be user demand for a utility with the capability of whence. I even received a question from one user asking if my "port" could be uploaded to SimTel. Due to the size of the SimTel archives, though, I was wondering if it would be possible/desirable to include my program as part of the standard DJGPP distribution, or at least as a part of an optional package. If all that is required is exact conformance to the Unix version, I would welcome any assistance with that task. Thank you. P.S.: Just in case anybody doesn't know, 'whence' is a Unix utility which, when given the name of a command, determines exactly what program is run by that command. This is different from simply search- ing for all instances of that program, in that the user is able to find out which one actually gets run. It is extremely useful for debugging many problems, especially PATH conflicts between identically named programs. My 'whence' port is not Unix-derived, and is in fact MS-DOS specific. It at present recognizes files with .COM, .EXE, and .BAT extensions, in that order, and is capable of recognizing commands prefixed with directories and/or drive letters. I have tested it and determined its operation to be exactly correct for a standard MS-DOS filesystem. I have not been able to test it under a networked or LFN system, although it should work correctly. Capitalization may be a factor under LFN; if so, that is easily corrected. Source and/or binary code is available on request (and is pretty small). -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | John M. Aldrich, aka Fighteer I | fighteer AT cs DOT com | | Plan: To find ANYONE willing to | http://www.cs.com/fighteer | | play Descent 2 on DWANGO! | Tagline: | --------------------------------------------------------------------------