University of Vaasa, Finland, Linux Pentium, node number
193.166.120.5 (garbo.uwasa.fi) has a large collection of shareware,
freeware and public domain programs which are available by anonymous
ftp (file transfer program) and WWW (World Wide Web). This
information file ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/0news_ts.txt contains
news about the programs in the /pc/ts directory (in reverse order).

....................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi   Co-moderator of news:comp.archives.msdos.announce
Moderating at ftp:// & http://garbo.uwasa.fi/ archives 193.166.120.5
Department of Accounting and Business Finance  ; University of Vaasa
mailto:ts@uwasa.fi <http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/>  ; FIN-65101,  Finland
Dense spam-kill procmail filtering with a public email key in effect
....................................................................

                    N e w s   o f   2 0 0 5

Wed 7-Dec-2005: Released update
 144994 Dec 7 2005 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
 tscmd33.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
adding
 124} How do I find files which do NOT contain the search string?
 125} How do I get the age of a file? Or of the files in a folder?

Tue 19-Apr-2005: I have made an update of my MS-DOS batch FAQ
collection. Since I no longer have an MS-DOS PC available, all the
new testing has been done on a Windows95 PC. This dos not, however,
imply that the collection has changed its, in some cases limited
MS-DOS specific nature.
  254761 Nov 11 2005 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsbat.zip
  tsbat82.zip Useful MS-DOS batch files and tricks, T.Salmi
The collection includes a number of References/Comments using
Google links. Google's system has changed, so some of the old
notation no longer worked. The syntax has been seen to.
  Added a directory history capability to "C.BAT Lazy changing of
directory".
Added to the 1BATFAQ.TXT FAQ file
 166) How do I uppercase all the filenames in a directory?
 167) How can I create a one byte file? Not two, one.

Sun 30-Oct-2005: I have released an update
 143047 Oct 30 2005 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
 tscmd32.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
Added the new scripts
 MAILDATE.CMD Build a message's "From" header
 WAKEUP.CMD   A reminder desktop alarm clock
Added to FAQ file 1CMDFAQ.TXT "NT/w2k/XP script tricks and tips":
 119} How can I remove any leading zeros from an unsigned integer?
 120} How do I use AND/OR/XOR/NOT operators in an IF statement?
 121} How do I make a simple reminder to pop up on the desktop?
 122} How do get a list files present in folder A but not in folder B?
 123} How to test if a file is in a folder or below two or more times?
Rewrote the badly broken script-only solution in
 19} How can one build a delay / sleep / wait procedure for a script?
As usual also made some minor additions and corrections to a few
other items.

Sun 25-Sep-2005: Again after the emergence of a few new items and
some minor additions to the old ones I have made an update
 136348 Sep 25 2005 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
 tscmd31.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
Added
 114} How do I pick a file's lines that are three characters long?
 115} How can I decompose the path to be one folder per line?
 116} How do I get a list all the *.BAT files which are at path?
 117} Is it possible to get the physical memory from the cmd?
 118} How to handle irregular empty fields of a CSV file?

Sat 3-Sep-2005: A number of new items have arisen to warrant an
update
 133666 Sep 3 2005 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
 tscmd30.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
Added
 108} How can I execute a script one line at a time to debug it?
 109} How do I open e.g. three separate instances of notepad at one go?
 110} Can I use a script to determine if a specific printer exists?
 111} How can I detect if a folder is shared or not?
 112} Help, an old program fails to run since I have no floppy drive.
 113} How do I find all *.TXT files on the C: drive sorted by size?
Added FULLNAME.CMD "Display the full name of a file" mainly as a
desktop aid to associate with file types.
As usual also made some minor additions to the already existing items.

Tue 12-Jul-2005: Update
 130301 Jul 12 2005 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
 tscmd29.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
Added two new items
 106} How to test whether a variable is a non-negative integer?
 107} How to do non-trivial renaming such as IMG*.jpg to IMG_*.jpg?
Added new, sligthly simpler options e.g. to
 26} How do I get the length of a string into a variable?
 27} How can I remove all the blank lines from a text file?
 50} How do I get the position of a substring in a string?
Added testing the LFN-status of a single file besides of an entire
folder to the item
 85} How to test if a folder contains any files with long names?
Totally rewrote the item
 46} Is a program available in the default folder or at path?

Wed 1-Jun-2005: Update
 127577 Jun 1 2005 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip  
 tscmd28.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
includes the following additions
 99} How do I "touch" a file to updated its last modified datestamp?
 100} How can I identify and copy the five latest files from a folder?
 101} How to capture Volume Serial Number into an environment variable?
 102} How can I extract the individual bits from a decimal byte?
 103} How do I exit a loop by pressing a key?
 104} How can one remove double quotes from a script variable?
 105} How to detect whether or not a folder contains hidden files?

Thu 5-May-2005: I have made an update
 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
 tscmd27.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
Added the following new items and made some editing of the old
ones. Also inserted some additional comments into the scripts
included in the collection.
 91} How do I get command-line reference help?
 92} How do I play a sound or a tune from the command line?
 93} How do I check if my script was given a parameter?
 94} Can I send the script's output both to the screen and a log file?
 95} How to perform an operation on all the filenames listed in a file?
 96} Can one use a script to columnize a comma separated values file?
 97} I need to remove duplicate entries from the output or a file.
 98} How do I equate all zip files with the date of their latest file?

Tue 19-Apr-2005: I have made an update
  ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tsbat.zip
  tsbat81.zip Useful MS-DOS batch files and tricks, T.Salmi
I am crossposting the announcement also to news:comp.os.msdos.4dos
as an exception since 4DOS usages have been introduced into my
MS-DOS(+Win../95/98/Me) command.com batch FAQ. Two new items have
been added
 164) How do I write 4DOS-aided batch files under COMMAND.COM?
 165) How to test if a directory contains any files with long names?
The latter item utilizes the ideas in the former.
As usual, some of the old items have been slightly revised.

Tue 19-Apr-2005: I have made an update
 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
 tscmd26.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
Added just one new item
 90} How do I get the most recent file within a directory structure?
And made a number of small revisions in the already present items.

Mon 21-Mar-2005: Updated my XP scripts collection adding the
following new items
 84} How can I automate downloading files from an ftp-site?
 85} How to test if a folder contains any files with long names?
 86} How to put each line of a text file into an environment variable?
 87} How can I create a four-digit random string?
 88} How to convert DEC to HEX with a script file, and vice versa?
 89} All of a sudden "echo." doesn't work any more. What's wrong?
The collection is available as
 115318 Mar 21 2005 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
 tscmd.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
Or, with the version number tscmd25.zip

Sat 22-Jan-2005: Updated my
 111572 Jan 22 2005 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
 tscmd.zip Useful NT/2000/XP script tricks and tips, T.Salmi
adding
 79} How can I trim leading and trailing spaces?
 80} How can I extract the last part of a path such as C:\ABC\DEF\GHI\?
 81} Is there a script to capitalize all the words in a text file?
 82} Why does echo 9>temp.txt fail while echo 10>temp.txt works?
 83} How to archive files with a rotation of five latest generations?
Again made some textual and other corrections kindly suggested by
Dr. John Stockton. Thank you John.
With the version number the collection now is tscmd24.zip

Tue 11-Jan-2005: Founded for this year the regular
 4903 Jan 11 11:38 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/filelist/ftpts65.zip
 ftpts65.zip Downloads of Timo's files in 2005

Sun 9-Jan-2005: Ever since the days of MS-DOS my favorite text
editor has been the SemWare Editor (TSE) and its SemWare
Applications Language (SAL). I have previously written a SAL macros
collection for the editor's versions 2.0 and 2.5 for MS-DOS. I have
prepared those same macros and a few additions as a new collection
hereby released as
 55142 Jan 9 2005 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/tswtse10.zip
 tswtse10.zip SemWare editor SAL Applications Language macros, T.Salmi
Since the origins of these macros go far back expect some redundancy
in my collection compared to what is now included by default in The
SemWare editor.

Sun 2-Jan-2005: The older news about the files in the /pc/ts
directory http://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts.html are available as
 :
 ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/ts/0newts64.txt
 The news announcements of 2004 about ts-programs, T.Salmi
 :
and so on, backwards.