DESCRIBE - Create or modify file descriptions
Purpose: Create, modify, or delete file and subdirectory descriptions.
Format: DESCRIBE [/A:[[-]rhsda]] file [[/D]"description "] ...
file : The file, directory, or list of files and directories
to operate on.
description : The description to attach to the file.
/A: (Attribute select) /D(escription follows)
File Selection
Supports extended wildcards, ranges, multiple file names, and include
lists.
Usage
DESCRIBE adds descriptions to files and subdirectories. The descriptions
can be displayed by DIR in single-column mode and by SELECT.
Descriptions let you identify your files in much more meaningful ways
than you can in an eight-character filename.
You enter a description on the command line by typing the DESCRIBE
command, the filename, and the description in quotation marks, like this:
[c:\] describe memo.txt "Memo to Bob about party"
If you don't put a description on the command line, DESCRIBE will prompt
you for it:
[c:\] describe memo.txt
Describe "memo.txt" : Memo to Bob about party
If you use wildcards or multiple filenames with the DESCRIBE command and
don't include the description text, you will be prompted to enter a
description for each file. If you do include the description on the
command line, all matching files will be given the same description.
If you use DESCRIBE on an HPFS drive, you must quote the file name if it
contains whitespace or special characters. See File Names for additional
details.
If you enter a quoted description on the command line, and the text
matches the name of a file in the current directory, the command
processor will treat the string as a quoted file name, not as description
text as you intended. To resolve this problem use the /D switch
immediately prior to the quoted description (with no intervening spaces).
For example, if the current directory contains the files DATA.TST and
"Test File", the first of these commands will work as intended, but the
second will not (in the second example the string "test file" will be
treated as a second file name, when it is intended to be description
text):
[c:\] describe data.tst /D"test file"
[c:\] describe data.tst "test file"
On HPFS drives you will not see file descriptions in a normal DIR
display, because DIR must leave space for the long filenames. To view
the descriptions, use DIR /Z to display the directory in FAT format.
Each description can be up to 511 characters long. You can change this
limit with the DescriptionMax directive in CMD.INI. In order to fit your
descriptions on a single line in a standard DIR display, keep them to 4o
characters or less (longer descriptions are wrapped in the DIR output).
DESCRIBE can edit descriptions longer than DescriptionMax (up to a limit
of 511 characters), but will not allow you to lengthen the existing text.
The descriptions are stored in each directory in a hidden file called
DESCRIPT.ION. Use the ATTRIB command to remove the hidden attribute from
this file if you need to copy or delete it. DESCRIPT.ION is always
created as a hidden file, but will not be re-hidden by CMD.EXE if you
remove the hidden attribute.
You can change the description file name with the SETDOS /D command, or
the DescriptionName directive in CMD.INI, and retrieve it with the _DName
internal variable. Use caution when changing the description file name,
as changing the name from the default will make it difficult to transfer
file descriptions to another system.
The description file is modified appropriately whenever you perform an
internal command which affects it (such as COPY, MOVE, DEL, or RENAME),
but not if you use an external program (such as XCOPY or a visual shell).
You can disable description processing on the Options 1 page of the
OPTION dialogs, with the Descriptions directive in the .INI file, or with
SETDOS /D.
When you COPY or MOVE files between two directories, both of which have
descriptions, and you use switches which enable processing of hidden
files (or you have removed the hidden attribute from DESCRIPT.ION), you
must use caution to avoid overwriting existing file descriptions in the
destination directory with the DESCRIPT.ION file from the source
directory. See the notes under the Advanced Features sections of COPY
and MOVE for additional details.
Options
/A:: (Attribute select) Select only those files that have the
specified attribute(s) set. Preceding the attribute character
with a hyphen [-] will select files that do not have that
attribute set. The colon [:] after /A is required. The
attributes are:
R Read-only
H Hidden
S System
D Subdirectory
A Archive
If no attributes are listed at all (e.g., DESCRIBE /A: ...), DESCRIBE
will select all files and subdirectories including hidden and system
files. If attributes are combined, all the specified attributes must
match for a file to be selected. For example, /A:RHS will select only
those files with all three attributes set. /D:(Description follows) The
quoted string immediately following this switch is a description, not a
file name. Use /D to avoid any ambiguity in the meaning of quoted
strings. See the Usage section above for details.
Created using Inf-PHP v.2 (c) 2003 Yuri Prokushev
Created using Inf-HTML v.0.9b (c) 1995 Peter Childs