Subj : sweep
To   : Vitus Jensen
From : Eddy Thilleman
Date : Sat Mar 10 2001 07:34 am

Hello Vitus,

Tuesday 06 March 2001 09:22, Vitus Jensen wrote to Eddy Thilleman:

ET>> I've written a sweep command in pascal and compiled it with
ET>> Borland Pascal as DOS .EXE file and compiled it with Virtual
ET>> Pascal/2 v2.1 build 243 as OS/2 .EXE file, and implemented it
ET>> also in REXX.

VJ> I'm still uncertain what a "sweep" program means.  I program which
VJ> searches the disk for certain files (.bak, etc) and removes them?

No, sorry. Sweep is a program that runs the as parameter (on the commandline) 
given command in the current directory and in all of its subdirectories.

for example:

sweep dir

runs the dir command in the current + all its subdirectories


another example

sweep for %a in (*.bak) do echo %a

The compiled version is easier to use than the REXX variant.

VJ> The usual reason is that you display one character at a time.  If you
VJ> have control over the code which does the screen output (e.g. you are
VJ> directly calling Vio*) try to buffer characters.

I use the standard writeln Pascal statement, I don't know if that's the cause.

I haven't looked at the underlying source code. I don't know if I have the 
underlying source code for the writeln statement in VP/2, because I can't find 
the source code for VP/2's system unit.

ET>> Shall I post the source of all three?

VJ> Are you sure it's the screen output?

No, I'm not certain.

VJ> If not, remove screen output from the program and rerun it.

I've run it without screen output from all the sweep variants themselves, the 
only screen output is by the command run in each (sub)directory. The command in 
the compiled OS/2 version is run somewhat slower.

VJ> If you know the offending part in the OS/2 EXE it may be an idea to
VJ> post that part.

I don't know what the cause is. My best guess is that the loading and 
initializing of cmd.exe takes more time than command.com. Cmd.exe and 
command.com are located on the same partition. In a few days (I don't have the 
time at the moment), I'll put a copy of cmd.exe on a ramdisk and modify the 
sweep pascal source code to start the cmd.exe file on the ramdisk, to see if 
that cuts down the difference.


  Greetings   -=Eddy=-

  email: e.thilleman@freeler.nl
         e.thilleman@hccnet.nl

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