Changes in FL Tools 4.00

Version 4.00 (1999-12-19)

This page	Other pages
Summary of Changes	Main Page
General Changes	Licence
Changes in FL	Summary of History
Changes in FLCOL	Changes in 3.xx
Changes in FLCUST	Changes in 4.01
Problems Fixed	User Guides
Other Points

Summary of Changes

General Changes

Version 4.00 represents a change of compiler, from IBM C/2 to Watcom C/C++ 11.0b. This may have fixed some problems with the previous version of OS2FL, and introduced others. (Alas, Watcom version 11 has proved to be disappointingly unreliable; three compiler bugs manifested themselves during migration from C/2 to Watcom.)
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The change of compiler has made it possible to introduce a 32-bit OS/2 version for the first time. However, in version 4.00 only FL.EXE and FLCUST.EXE are 32-bit; the other tools in FLOS2.ZIP are identical to the 16-bit versions in FLOS1.ZIP.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
An HTML version of the documentation is provided for the first time. For simplicity, the HTML is generated by a BookMaster-to-HTML conversion tool, although this does not result in an ideal presentation in HTML.
[Back to Summary of Changes]

Changes in FL

The longest complete filespec possible on HPFS, NTFS, VFAT, and FAT32 drives is 260 bytes (including the null). In version 3.02, FL limited the drive+path+null to 128 bytes, and limited the name+extension+null to 128 bytes. In version 4.00 FL has been enhanced to support the longest filespec possible on each operating system.
By a careful modification to FL's internal storage management, the support for longer filespecs has been achieved without any significant increase in FL's memory requirements.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
When a file name or path is too long to display in its entirety, the excess characters are replaced by a single plus character ("+") to indicate that characters have been omitted. The "+" can occur at the left-hand or right-hand end of a directory path, or at the right-hand end of a file name.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The definition of a file extension has been changed from "characters following the first dot" to "characters following the last dot".
[Back to Summary of Changes]
In 8.3 compatibility mode, the test for a valid 8.3 file name has been made more rigorous; this will result in some files displaying in unaligned mode when previously they would have displayed in compatibility mode.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
A "d" is now displayed in the file-atttribute field for directories.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The file-size field has been increased from 7 digits to a full 10 digits. This ensures that even the largest of AVI files will have their sizes displayed correctly.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The file-year field has been increased from 2 digits to 4 digits.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
File dates are now always shown in ISO format ("YYYY-MM-DD"). In this release there is no customisation option to control this, although this might be added in the future.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The file-time field has been expanded by adding the "seconds" field. PC file systems store the time of last change with a resolution of 2 seconds. This means that the seconds field is always a multiple of two.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The column spacing of the size/date/time fields has been reduced from 2 blanks to one blank.
The reduced column spacing worsens readability, but has been done to minimise the reduction of the size of the input fields on the mode-0 screen. Even so, when long file names are present the input fields become very short.
Be aware however that FL has always supported horizontally-scrollable input fields that allow you to type commands of up to 60 bytes in length; the problem is that you cannot see the command in its entirety. If you find the length of the input fields on the mode-0 screen too short, try the mode-1 screen instead (command: #M1).
This aspect of the screen design may be subject to further change in future releases.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
A trailing backslash has been added to the paths on those screens that display paths (the mode-0 screen in tree mode and multiple-pattern mode; the mode-1 and mode-2 screens in all modes).
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The path/size/date/time information on the input line of the mode-1 screen has been omitted in order to provide a longer input line.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The path/size/date/time information on the input line of the mode-2 screen has been repositioned in order to provide a longer input line. This information is now shown on an adjacent line.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The digital clock on the right-hand side of the top line of the screen has been withdrawn. It may be re-instated in the future, depending on future screen redesign.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The "Line x of y" field in the centre of the top line has been moved to the right-hand side to replace the clock, and its color changed to the color defined for "highlighted text" in FLCUST.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The file pattern (directory path) field on the left-hand side of the top line has been expanded to occupy the left and centre of the line, to accommodate the longer paths that are now common.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The disk-size and free-size fields on the trailer line of the mode-0 and mode-1 screens are now restricted to three significant digits. The sizes are shown in units of KB (kilobytes), MB (megabytes), GB (gigabytes), TB (terabytes), PB (petabytes), or EB (exabytes). The units are multiples of 1000, not multiples of 1024.
The units used are chosen automatically, with the decimal point inserted as required. The character used for the decimal point is derived from the NLS settings defined for the system.
The disk size is ROUNDED up or down to three digits, but the free size is TRUNCATED to three digits; this ensures that the amount of free space actually available is AT LEAST the amount shown.
Note that when the PC-DOS version is used on Windows 98 to list files on a FAT32 disk that is bigger than 2GB, both the disk size and free size are restricted to a maximum of 2GB. This is caused by Windows 98's compatibility behaviour for DOS-mode applications.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
Minor changes have been made to other aspects of the screen design. Further revisions are possible in future releases.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The END key now moves the cursor to the column immediately following the last non-blank character in the input field, instead of leaving a blank. The reason for this change is to make FL consistent with every other character-based tool that has input lines (for example: file editors).
[Back to Summary of Changes]
In version 3.02, FL allowed an empty sub-directory to be displayed – FL showed the ".." entry with the date and time of the parent directory. However, FL did not allow an empty root directory to be displayed. This was particularly annoying when using removeable R/W media such as diskettes, ZIP disks, JAZZ disks, and R/W optical disks. FL has been enhanced to support empty lists in a consistent fashion.
For each file pattern specified (or defaulted) on the invocation of FL or via the #R (Refresh), #A (Add), or #L (Load) commands, FL will now display at least one line. If there are no files or directories that match the pattern, the line displayed for that pattern has "(empty list)" in the filename column, and blanks in the size, date, and time columns. If FL is in tree mode or multiple-pattern mode, the directory path of the empty list is displayed as usual.
Commands can be entered on the empty-list line as normal, and the #D (drive), #P (path), and # (whole filespec) commands are replaced by the values for the empty list. However, the #N (name), #E (extension), and #F (file) commands have no meaning on the empty-list line; if coded in a command, they are replaced by the null string.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The processing when multiple file patterns are specified has been changed. In version 3.02, FL would discard those patterns that were in error or which had no files, and display the list resulting from the remaining patterns. In version 4.00, FL now discontinues processing if one of more of the file patterns is in error. This gives you the opportunity to press the command recall key, correct the error, and issue the command again. A file pattern might be in error for one of the following reasons:
- The drive is not ready (for example, it is a CD-ROM drive that does not contain a CD-ROM).
- The drive specified is not valid (example: "FL 8:\OS2").
- The path specified does not exist.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
To allow errors in the file patterns typed with the #R (Refresh), #A (Add), and #L (Load) commands to be corrected easily, these commands are now stored in the command recall stack if typed from the keyboard. They are not stored in the command recall stack if obtained from a function-key.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
In version 3.02, file patterns typed on the OS/2 command line could be enclosed in quotes in order to list files whose names or extensions contained special characters, such as blanks. For example:
FL "C:\* *.*"
would list all files in the root directory on the C: drive that contained at least one blank in the name (for example: "EA DATA . SF").
In version 4.00 this capability has been extended to file patterns specified with the #R, #A, and #L commands on the FL command line.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
Version 3.02 had a curious "other drives" capability whereby if FL could not find any files matching the specified file patterns, FL would look on other drives for files matching the first specified file pattern after the pattern had been fully resolved. However, only drives C: to E: were scanned. If FL found some files, it then asked whether you wished to continue.
This other-drives behaviour is considered inappropriate, and has been withdrawn.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
A blank command has been added at the end of the command-recall stack. This serves two functions:
- It indicates when you have cycled through all of the saved commands that are available for recall.
- It provides an empty line on which you can type the command you want, having decided that the command you want is not present in the command-recall stack.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
All list-sorts now perform both a major sort and one or more minor sorts. This is done in order to ensure that the file order after sorting is completely predictable (that is, not determined by the order in which the files' directory-entries happen to occur). The major and minor sorts are as follows:

Major sort Minor sorts (in order)
Name Extension, path
Extension Name, path
Path Name, extension
Size Name, extension, path
Date/time Name, extension, path

Note that directories are:
- Forced to the top of the list for sort by name, extension, or path.
- Forced to the bottom of the list for sort by size.
- Occur in their natural position in the list for sort by date.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The #R (Refresh) command has been enhanced to provide an "intelligent" up-directory function for the specific command "#R .." (either typed explicitly or via a function key). The display is refreshed with the contents of the parent directory, but with the current line being the child directory from which the command was issued.
Early versions of FL had this capability, but it was limited to the standard function-key definitions. The change for this release supports this capability on the user function-key definitions too. (Note: in a previous release this capability of the standard function keys was inadvertently disabled, and the OS/2 version in 3.02 does not exhibit it.)
If you want the current line in the parent directory to be the first line in the list (that is, the same behaviour as version 3.02), use the following sequence of commands:
#R .. #& #T
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The #C command (Change Directory and Quit) has been enhanced for OS/2 to circumvent undesirable side-effects that #C has in the OS/2 environment. PC DOS does not suffer from these side effects, and so the change is not required for the PC DOS version of FL.
There are two existing ways of exiting from FL:
- #Q (Quit) exits to the original directory; it affects neither the current drive nor any of the current directories on other drives.
- #C (Change Directory and Quit) exits to the specified drive and directory (default: the directory on display), and also changes the current directories on other drives to the ones last viewed on the FL screen.
#C works fine on PC DOS, but on OS/2 the operating system saves and restores the working environment around the invocation of FL.EXE, with the result that FL cannot easily change the current drive and directories to those last viewed on the FL screen. The way that FL does in fact achieve this is by creating a child process with the required current drive and directories, and then deleting the parent process. This has two undesirable side effects:
- The command history is lost. Pressing the up-arrow key on the OS/2 command line shows nothing.
- Window-creep occurs. When a command-line window is opened, it is usually positioned slightly displaced from the previous command-line window. Because the original (parent) window is deleted by FL on exit, and a new window created, the visual effect is that the window seems to creep around the screen.
  Although it is possible to customise OS/2 so that windows open each time in the same position, that has the disadvantage of needing to select the window on top and move it out of the way in order to access the window beneath.
The enhanced support for #C circumvents both of these disadvantages, but without incurring any significant penalty. The enhanced support is enabled as follows:
1. Set the environment variable FL_EXIT_FILE to a valid full filespec. This will cause FL to write a tiny temporary file with that filespec on exit from FL. Choose the filespec as follows:
  - The drive and path can be any existing drive and path. If you have a RAM drive, the root directory on the RAM drive would be a good choice. Otherwise, the TEMP or TMP directory would be sensible choices, as usually these directories are omitted from back-up processing.
  - The file name can be any valid name; "FLEXIT" is suggested.
  - The file extension must be BAT for PC DOS and Windows, and CMD for OS/2.
  Examples:
```
SET FL_EXIT_FILE=M:\FLEXIT.BAT
SET FL_EXIT_FILE=C:\TEMP\MYFL.CMD
```
2. Invoke FL via the F.BAT or F.CMD files provided with FL. You can rename these files if you wish to use some other name.
Notes:
- FL must be invoked via a BAT or CMD file. This will cause problems if the file patterns specified as parameters contain multiple adjacent significant blanks, or certain other special characters such as the comma. Avoid specifying these as parameters to F.BAT or F.CMD.
- The OS/2 version of FL contains code to test whether a drive is "ready". If the drive is not ready, FL does not attempt to set the current directory on that drive. This avoids an irritating time-out or pop-up window that might otherwise occur. Drives that are not "ready" are usually removeable drives that do not contain any media (e.g. diskette drive, CD-ROM drive, R/W optical drive, removeable hard-drive).
- If you have two or more EIDE drives and a motherboard/BIOS combination of fairly recent vintage, you may find that those EIDE drives that you are not currently using power-down after a pre-set time. The problem with this is that such drives still appear to be "ready". If FL tried to set the current directory on such a drive, there would be an irritating wait while the disk powered up. To avoid this, FL sets the current directory only on the drives actually visited during the current FL session.
  Be aware that if you enter on an FL command line a command such as:
  #O CD E:\MYDATA
  to set the current directory on a drive that you have NOT visited during the current FL session, that directory will remain the current directory on that drive ONLY during the FL session; on exit, FL will not set the current directory on that drive, and the current directory will revert to its prior setting.
- Because FL always writes the same temporary file, do not exit from FL from two or more windows at the same time. (This restriction could be avoided by using the process id as the file name in FL_EXIT_FILE, but the additional processing needed to determine the process id would have to be done outside FL, and this extra complexity is not warranted.)
- If environment variable FL_EXIT_FILE is not set, #C behaves in the same way as previous releases.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The limit on the maximum number of files and directories that can be listed has been revised in order to make it possible to list more files. In version 3.02 the limit was a total of 8191 files and directories. The limit has been changed as follows:
- For 32-bit OS/2, the limit has been increased to 99999. This limit is determined by the size of the "Line x of y" fields on the top line of the screen.
  This version of FL was tested on the development system by listing in tree mode the combined contents of 9 drives (including a back-up drive) – a total of 39360 files and directories. On a freshly-booted system (i.e. disk cache empty), this took 55 seconds on a 166MHz Pentium I with 64MB of memory. Tested when the system had been in use all day (i.e. disk cache full), it took 31 seconds. Sorting the list took approximately 1.5 seconds.
- For 16-bit OS/2, the limit has been increased to 16375. This limit (effectively 16K) corresponds to the number of pointers that can be stored in a 64KB segment, and cannot be increased further without redesigning FL's internal storage management.
- For PC DOS, the limit is academic, as memory exhaustion occurs before the implementation limit of 16375 is encountered. On the development system, using PC DOS 7.0 running in a DOS box on OS/2 Warp 3, the MEM command indicated that the largest executable program size was 629KB (644064 bytes), but only circa 5200 files and directories could be listed before memory exhaustion occurred.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The order of the columns when the output of FL is redirected to a file has been changed from:
name.ext size date time disk\path
to:
size date time attrs disk\path\name.ext
The reason for this is to avoid potential confusion introduced by blanks in filespecs (for example, when parsing the output in REXX). The file attributes are also output for the first time.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The invocation option which displays the line-mode help has been changed from "?" to "/?". This makes FL consistent with other DOS and OS/2 commands. Also, it makes it possible for the first time to restrict the list to files that have names that are precisely one character long.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
FL.EXE is no longer modified by FLCUST.EXE when setting the customisation options; FL.EXE now always reads the FL profile FL.PRO. Note: FL looks for the profile ONLY in the directory from which FL.EXE was loaded.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
FL had some support for previous versions of the profile, but the code did not work correctly. Support for previous versions of the profile has been withdrawn – only profiles from version 3.02 will be accepted.
[Back to Summary of Changes]

Major sort	Minor sorts (in order)
Name	Extension, path
Extension	Name, path
Path	Name, extension
Size	Name, extension, path
Date/time	Name, extension, path

Changes in FLCOL

FLCOL has been renamed FLCOLOR.
[Back to Summary of Changes]

Changes in FLCUST

FLCUST no longer modifies FL.EXE. For FL.EXE, FLCUST modifies only the profile FL.PRO.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
FLCUST had some support for previous versions of the profile, but the code did not work correctly. Support for previous versions of the profile has been withdrawn – only profiles from version 3.02 will be accepted.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The filespec prompt now includes the drive+path where FLCUST will look for the specified file. It is initialised with the drive+path from which FLCUST.EXE was loaded, but can be altered if you want to edit the relevant file in a different directory. The cursor is placed at the end of the filespec rather than the beginning.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
On the "Colors" panels for FL and FLTREE, an item counter has been added to indicate how many of the available items are on display ("Items x to y of z"). Without this it was easy to overlook the fact that the list of items is scrollable.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
On the "Colors" panels for FL and FLTREE, the "Background" and "Foreground" columns have been interchanged so that the "Foreground" column occurs first. The makes the column order correspond to the normal way of talking about text color. It is more usual to specify text color as (say) "white on blue" rather than as "blue beneath white".
[Back to Summary of Changes]
On the function-key and color-setting panels for FL and FLTREE, the cursor left/right keys have been changed so that they do not skip to the next or previous line if already at the left or right extremity; use the tab/back-tab or cursor up/down keys instead.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The behaviour of the keys when the FLCUST help is displayed has been made consistent with their behaviour when the FL help is displayed in FLCUST.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
On the "Other Settings" panels for FL and FLTREE, the action of the CTRL-UP-ARROW and CTRL-DOWN-ARROW keys has been reversed when setting the first line of help. Although the previous definition was consistent with the concept of a window moving up and down a fixed list, pressing CTRL-DOWN-ARROW to INCREASE the setting was simply too counter intuitive.
[Back to Summary of Changes]

Problems Fixed

(FL) The longest filespec possible on HPFS, NTFS, VFAT, and FAT32 drives is 260 bytes (including the null). In version 3.02, FL limited the drive+path+null to 128 bytes, and the name+extension+null to 128 bytes. In some parts of FL these limits were enforced (the overlong string was truncated), but there were other parts where the limits should have been enforced but were not. This resulted in memory being overwritten when FL encountered an overlong path or name. It is not clear what subsequent errors this might have caused.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) When listing files on two or more drives, with at least one HPFS drive (containing long file names) and one FAT16 drive, the width of the file-name column on the FL panel was determined by the longest file name on the LAST drive specified, whereas it should have been determined by the longest file name on ALL drvies specified.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) Changes for a previous release had lost the attribute displays on the mode-1 and mode-2 screens, and introduced spurious characters on the mode-2 screen.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) When the /T (Tree) option was specified, directories in excess of the 128th caused a memory overwriting problem if the directory did not contain any files that appeared in the list. It is not clear what subsequent errors this might have caused.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) When the /T option was specified and insufficient memory was available, storage was freed that was still in use; this gave rise to an addressing exception on OS/2.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) When "sort on path" was specified and there were more than 255 directories in the list, the paths in excess of the 255th were not sorted correctly. This was caused by the code performing a string comparison on a 2-byte binary index, instead of performing an integer comparison.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) When "sort on path" was specified, a minor sort on name was also supposed to be performed, but the minor sort compared the wrong bytes, resulting in an apparently random order after sorting for files in the same directory.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) The customisation option which controlled whether sorts were sensitive to upper/lower case was ignored for paths – the path sort was always case sensitive.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) An error in the command-parsing logic meant that if a command inadvertently contained a null character (e.g. from a function-key definition), FL attempted to execute bogus commands in a potentially infinite loop.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) When the #R command was used for a drive that was not ready (such as an empty diskette drive or CD-ROM drive), the error message sometimes contained spurious data for the filespec.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) The "Up Directory" command in the standard function-key definitions (command "#r ..", shown as "<-Dir" on the screen) compared a buffer containing a blank-padded string with a buffer containing a null-terminated string when looking for the parent directory, and consequently never found a match. This caused the first line in the parent directory to be made the current line, instead of the line for the child directory.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) The "Up Directory" command checked only entries for directories, but failed to mask out the hidden, system, and read-only attributes. Consequently when the parent directory had one or more of these attributes, the first line was made the current line in the parent directory, instead of the line for the child directory.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) The code for handling the SET command (to set environment variables for the duration of the FL session) obtained a buffer that was one byte too small, resulting in an overwriting problem when data was copied into it.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) The code for handling the SET command failed to translate the name of the environment variable to upper case.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) An error in the line-advance logic meant that on the line-mode screen that displayed the commands executed and their responses, the last line of the command output could sometimes be overwritten by the FL "ERROR" prompt when the command returned a non-zero value (e.g. "LOADDSKF /?").
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) When switching from the mode-1 screen to the mode-2 screen with the help displayed, two screen cells adjacent to the help panel were not set correctly.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FL) An error in the processing the profile "FL.PRO" meant that FL always rejected the profile as invalid.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FLCUST) A change in a previous release of FLCUST had resulted in the "Top line of help" option on the FL "Other Settings" panel becoming inoperative.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FLCUST) The FLTREE function-key panels were initialised with only the first 32 characters from the commands in the profile, instead of the full 60 characters.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
(FLCUST) The TAB-key on the FLTREE "Colors" panel failed to advance to the last line (although the DOWN-ARROW key did).
[Back to Summary of Changes]

Other Points

Only FL.EXE and FLCUST.EXE have been modified and recompiled in this release. The other tools in the package have not been recompiled – they are identical to the ones that were shipped in the version 3.02 package.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The versions for different operating systems are derived from the same application source code, but have different support functions that interface to the operating system. However, generally all versions support the same capabilities.
[Back to Summary of Changes]
The documentation has been only slightly revised for this release. There may therefore be some errors, omissions, or contradictions in the manual.
[Back to Summary of Changes]

Page last changed: 2008-07-25