----------------------------- Dave's DosBox Utilities - updated: Jul-2022

These are various utilities I've written to enhance the experience of using
DosBox. I created and tested them under my own DosBox distribution which is
fundamentally the H-A-L-9000 "Megabuild 6" - this is available for download
from my site.

Most of the utilities should work well under other versions of DosBox, and
most work in any DOS compatible environment - including native DOS!
 
These are divided into two groups:
    DBUTILS     - These would normally go in: \DOSBOX
    DBUTILS\Cmds- These would normally go in: \DOSBOX\Cmds



--- Added DOS commands:
Native DosBox is missing or limited in the commands which were normally
provided with DOS. These are mostly commands I have created to fill in these
gaps.

Most of my commands show syntax when run with no arguments, or with ?, -?
or /? option.


BAX.COM     - BAtch eXtended
  Overcomes some of the limitations of DosBox .BAT files, and makes them much
  more powerful.

COMP.COM    - Missing in DOSBOX
 My COMP does binary compares only (ASCII is handled much better by my
 eXpress Compare tool which lets you move between the differences) and
 has a 2000 file limit.

CP.COM      - Improved COPY
 Won't allow you to use the same name as source and destination.
 Has options for QUIET and translate NEWLINES to UNiX style.

DBSC.COM    - Not included with DOS but handy with DOSBOX.
 This utiity is handy for saving some command output to a file because DosBox
 can't redirect error output (stderr) - normally done in DOS with: 2>
 It also does not perform console I/O via BIOS call, so reading from the screen
 is the easiest reliable way to get small output. It limits what you can get to
 the last 43 lines ... but this is enough for many of my utility help screens.

DBSUBST.COM - SUBST is limited in DOSBOX
 DosBox SUBST does not show SUBTed drives!
 DBSUBST examines MOUNTs to determine which drives are actually subdirectories
 of other drives and shows them as SUBSTes.

EDT.EXE     - Simple TEXT editor
 See EDT.TXT for more information.

FIND.COM    - Missing in DOSBOX
 My find can search subdirectories and displays a summary of total
 matches at the end.

GDBCM.BAT / $GDBCM$.COM
 Gets DosBox config file / mount information into an environment variable.
 (I saw someone asking about doing this in DosBox forums).

KEYSUB.COM  - Make DosBox workable on non-PC keyboards
 See KEYSUB.TXT for more information.

SORT.COM    - Missing is DOSBOX

TREE.COM    - Missing in DOSBOX

VLT.COM     - View Large Text files - handy to see DOSBOX.TXT

WCMD.COM    - run host Windows CoMmanDs within DOSBOX
 See WCMD.TXT for more information.

XCOPY.COM   - Missing in DOSBOX
 Affected by DosBox "Setting timestamp" issue, copied files always have
 current time.

XCD         - eXpress Change Directory
 Change both drive and directory at the same time.  eg: XCD Y:\CMDS
 Can save current drive/directory before changing   eg: XCD =R:\TEMP
 and restore to it later.
    eg1: XCD -      (Return to '=' dir, Deletes Temporary File)
    eg2: XCD +      (Return to '=' dir, Keeps   Temporary File)

XDIR.COM    - Dir is limited in DOSBOX
 Named XDIR as "DIR" is taken by internal command,  **See Note below
 Can list subdirectories (DIR accepts /S but appears to ignore it).
 Can sort files listed.   Other additions (see /?).
 NOTE: Unlike "normal" DOS "DIR" command, XDIR can sort files in all
  subdirectories at once.  Very useful for finding the newest/oldest
  largest/smallest occurance of a file. To do so it stores all file and
  directory information in 64k RAM segments. This imposes limits on how
  many files it can handle in one go:
  Directories = ParentLink(2)+TimeStamp(4)+NameSize(1)+#charsInName.
  File = DirLink(2)+TimeStamp(4)+Size(4)+NameSize(1)+#charsInName.
  Doing math with filenames ranging from 1 to 12 characters (8.3), we get
  8-19 and 12-23 bytes respectively. In segments of 65536 bytes, this
  translates to 8192-3449 directories and 5461-2849 files.
  So, you can run into limitations when viewing every file in large
  directory trees, but I find the ability to sort all files well worth it.

XRS.COM     - eXpressREscan (all mounted drives)
 DosBox's built in RESCAN command can be a bit annoying because it only
 rescans the drive you have selected.   This means:
  If you need to rescan a drive other than the one you have selected, or
  you want to be sure multiple drives are accurate, you need to go to
  each drive and RESCAN individually.

_PAUSE.COM  - overcome DOSBOX ^C bug in stopping BATCH files (+more)
  Use: '_PAUSE ?' for more information.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note:   DOSBOX command names are "baked" into the program and cannot be easily
        changed. If you want to replace a DOSBOX internal command with a DOS
        program, you can use my DBCMDPAT utility (included in my DosBox dist)
        to patch internal command names.


Dave Dunfield   -   https://dunfield.themindfactory.com
