leefi@microsoft.UUCP (Lee Fisher) (01/28/88)
In article <3762@xanth.cs.odu.edu>, kahn@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Gary I Kahn) writes: > > The MS/DOS 3.2 manual has examples of using the FC (file comparison) > command with ambiguous file names. When I try to use wildcards (just > like in the examples), the program gives me an "Unable to open > text1.*", or something like that, and it aborts. Anyone have any > comments? This is a documentation error, FC does not support wildcards. The COMP utility does. In the past, the COMP utility was available with IBM's PC-DOS whereas MS-DOS had FC. With MS-DOS v3.30, you get both. -Lee ________ 01001100 Lee Fisher, Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA. 01000101 {uw-beaver,decvax,decwrl,trsvax,sun,attunix,uunet}!microsof!leefi 01000101 leefi@microsof.uucp 01000110 leefi@microsof.beaver.washington.edu 01001001 disclaimer: My opinions are my own, not those of my employer.
catone@dsl.cis.upenn.edu (Tony Catone) (02/09/88)
In article <3762@xanth.cs.odu.edu> kahn@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Gary I Kahn) writes: >The MS/DOS 3.2 manual has examples of using the FC (file comparison) >command with ambiguous file names. When I try to use wildcards (just like >in the examples), the program gives me an "Unable to open text1.*", or >something like that, and it aborts. Anyone have any comments? I want to >compare all of the files in one directory with files of like names in >a parallel (backup) directory. Thanks in advance. You could always use the FOR and IF DOS commands, either in a batch file or interactively (the later method was never explained very well in the PC-DOS manuals I read, way back when). These commands have existed in MS- and PC- DOS since version 2.0, and are very useful for just the sort of thing you want to do. An example: compare all files in \original with like names in \backup. Swich into the \original directory and issue the command for %a in (*.*) do if exist \backup\%a fc %a \backup\%a from the DOS command line prompt. Of course, this runs much slower than file name expansion would from inside fc, since this method loads fc each time a match is found. RAM disks speed everything up. It's not as nice as being able to use ambiguous file names, but it does work across a variety of DOS versions and hardware. - Tony catone@dsl.cis.upenn.edu catone@wharton.upenn.edu