SELECT - Select files for a command
Purpose: Interactively select files for a command.
Format: SELECT [/A[[:][-][rhsda]] /D /E /H /I"text" /J /L
/O[:][-]adeginrsu /T:acw /Z] [command ] ... (files ...)...
command : The command to execute with the selected files.
files : The files from which to select. File names may be
enclosed in either parentheses or square brackets. The
difference is explained below.
/A(ttribute select) /J(ustify names)
/D(isable color coding) /L(ower case)
/E (use upper case) /O(rder)
/H(ide dots) /T(ime)
/I (match descriptions) /Z (use FAT format)
File Selection
Supports extended wildcards, ranges, multiple file names, and include
lists. Ranges must appear immediately after the SELECT keyword.
Usage
SELECT allows you to select files for internal and external commands by
using a full-screen "point and shoot" display. You can have SELECT
execute a command once for each file you select, or have it create a list
of files for a command to work with. The command can be an internal
command, an alias, an external command, or a batch file.
If you use parentheses around the files, SELECT executes the command once
for each file you have selected. During each execution, one of the
selected files is passed to the command as an argument. If you use
square brackets around files, the SELECTed files are combined into a
single list, separated by spaces. The command is then executed once with
the entire list presented as part of its command-line arguments.
Using the SELECT File List
When you execute the SELECT command, the file list is displayed in a
full-screen format which includes a top-line status bar and shows the
command to be executed, the number of files marked, and the number of
Kbytes in those files.
SELECT uses the cursor up, cursor down, PgUp, and PgDn keys to scroll
through the file list. You can also use character matching to find
specific files, just as you can in any popup window. While the file list
is displayed you can enter any of the following keys to select or
unselect files, display files, execute the command, or exit:
+ or space Select a file, or unselect a marked file.
- Unselect a marked file.
* Reverse all of the current marks (except those
on subdirectories). If no files have been
marked you can use * to mark all of the files.
/ Unselect all files.
Ctrl-L View the current highlighted file with LIST
When you exit from LIST, the SELECT screen will
be restored.
Enter Execute the command with the marked files, or
with the currently highlighted file if no files
have been marked.
Esc Skip the files in the current display and go on
to the next file specification inside the
parentheses or brackets (if any).
Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Break Cancel the current SELECT command entirely.
On FAT drives the file list is shown in standard FAT directory format,
with names at the left an descriptions at the right. On HPFS drives the
format is similar but more space is allowed for the name, and the
description is not shown. In this format long names are truncated if
they do not fit in the allowable space. For a short-name format
(including descriptions) on long filename drives, use the /Z switch.
When displaying descriptions in the short filename format, SELECT adds a
right arrow [>] at the end of the line if the description is too long to
fit on the screen. This symbol will alert you to the existence of
additional description text. You can use the left and right arrow keys
to scroll the description area of the screen horizontally and view the
additional text.
You can display the filenames in color by using the SET command to create
an environment variable called COLORDIR, or using the Commands page of
the OPTION dialogs or a text editor to set the ColorDir directive in your
CMD.INI file. If you do not use the COLORDIR variable or the ColorDir
directive, SELECT will use the default screen colors for all files. See
the discussion of color-coded directories under DIR for more details. To
disable directory color coding within SELECT, use the /D option.
You can set the default colors used by SELECT on the Commands page of the
OPTION dialogs or with the SelectColors and SelectStatBarColors
directives in the .INI file. If SelectColors is not used, the SELECT
display will use the current default colors. If SelectStatBarColors is
not used, the status bar will use the reverse of the SELECT colors.
Creating SELECT Commands
In the simplest form of SELECT, you merely specify the command and then
the list of files from which you will make your selection(s). For
example:
[c:\] select copy (*.com *.exe) a:\
will let you select from among the .COM files on the current drive and
will then invoke the COPY command to copy each file you select to drive
A:. After the .COM files are done, the operations will be repeated for
the .EXE files.
If you want to select from a list of all the .COM and .EXE files mixed
together, create an include list inside the parentheses by inserting a
semicolon:
[c:\] select copy (*.com;*.exe) a:\
Finally, if you want the SELECT command to send a single list of files to
COPY, instead of invoking COPY once for each file you select, put the
file names in square brackets instead of parentheses:
[c:\] select copy [*.com;*.exe] a:\
If you use brackets, you have to be sure that the resulting command (the
word COPY, the list of files, and the destination drive in this example)
does not exceed the command line length limit of 1,023 characters. The
current line length is displayed by SELECT while you are marking files to
help you to conform to this limit.
The parentheses or brackets enclosing the file name(s) can appear
anywhere within the command; SELECT assumes that the first set of
parentheses or brackets it finds is the one containing the list of files
from which you wish to make your selection.
When you use SELECT on an HPFS drive, you must quote any file names
inside the parentheses which contain whitespace or special characters.
See File Names for additional details. For example, to copy selected
files from the "Program Files" directory to the E:\SAVE directory:
[c:\] select copy ("Program Files\*.*") e:\save\
File names passed to the command will be quoted automatically if they
contain whitespace or special characters.
The list of files from which you wish to select can be further refined by
using date, time, size, and file exclusion ranges. The range(s) must be
placed immediately after the word SELECT. If the command is an internal
command that supports ranges, an independent range can also be used in
the command itself.
You cannot use command grouping to make SELECT execute several commands,
because SELECT will assume that the parentheses are marking the list of
files from which to select, and will display an error message or give
incorrect results if you try to use parentheses for command grouping
instead. (You can use a SELECT command inside command grouping
parentheses, you just can't use command grouping to specify a group of
commands for SELECT to execute.)
Advanced Topics
If you don't specify a command, the selected filename(s) will become the
command. For example, this command defines an alias called UTILS that
selects from the executable files in the directory C:\UTIL, and then
executes them in the order marked:
[c:\] alias utils select (c:\util\*.com;*.exe;*.btm;*.bat)
If you want to use filename completion to enter the filenames inside the
parentheses, type a space after the opening parenthesis. Otherwise, the
command-line editor will treat the open parenthesis as the first
character of the filename.
With the /I option, you can select files based on their descriptions.
SELECT will display files if their description matches the text after
the /I switch. The search is not case sensitive. You can use wildcards
and extended wildcards as part of the text.
When sorting file names and extensions for the SELECT display, CMD.EXE
normally assumes that sequences of digits should be sorted numerically
(for example, the file DRAW2 would come before DRAW03 because 2 is
numerically smaller than 03), rather than strictly alphabetically (where
DRAW2 would come second because "2" comes after "0"). You can defeat
this behavior and force a strict alphabetic sort with the /O:a option.
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 optional. The
attributes are:
R Read-only
H Hidden
S System
D Subdirectory
A Archive
If no attributes are listed at all (e.g., SELECT /A ...),
SELECT will display all files and subdirectories including
hidden and system files. If attributes are combined, all the
specified attributes must match for a file to be included in
the listing. For example, /A:RHS will display only those
files with all three attributes set.
/D: (Disable color coding) Temporarily turn off directory color
coding within SELECT.
/E (use upper case) Display filenames upper case; also see SETDOS
/U and the UpperCase directive in CMD.INI.
/H (Hide dots) Suppress the display of the "." and ".."
directories.
/I (match descriptions) Display filenames by matching text in
their descriptions. The text can include wildcards and
extended wildcards. The search text must be enclosed in
quotation marks. You can select all filenames that have a
description with /I"[?]*", or all filenames that do not have a
description with /I"[]".
/J (Justify names) Justify (align) filename extensions and
display them in the traditional format.
/L (Lower case) Display file and directory names in lower case;
also see SETDOS /U and the UpperCase directive in CMD.INI.
/O: (Order) Set the sort order for the files. The order can be
any combination of the following options:
- Reverse the sort order for the next option.
a Sort in ASCII order, not numerically, when there are
digits in the name.
d Sort by date and time (oldest first); for HPFS drives
also see /T.
e Sort by extension.
g Group subdirectories first, then files.
i Sort by file description.
n Sort by filename (this is the default).
r Reverse the sort order for all options.
s Sort by size.
u Unsorted.
/T: (Time display) Specify which of the date and time fields on an
HPFS drive should be displayed and used for sorting:
a last access date and time
c creation date and time
w last write date and time (default)
/Z: Display HPFS filenames in the traditional FAT format, with the
filename at the left and the description at the right. Long
names will be truncated to 12 characters; if the name is
longer than 12 characters, it will be followed by a right
arrow [>] to show that one or more characters have been
truncated.
Created using Inf-PHP v.2 (c) 2003 Yuri Prokushev
Created using Inf-HTML v.0.9b (c) 1995 Peter Childs