When I @Macarlo registered The SemWare Editor Professional for DOS (TSE Pro) version 2.50e to use it on OS/2 Warp I discovered that this fantastic editor have inside it an also fantastic file manager called TSE File that you can use it inside TSE Pro called by macro or runs stand alone with a .bat if you prefer. Using the Chris Graham Task Manager monitoring I verified that TSE File runs fastly don't consuming CPU. I created an icon for TSE File and put the TSE File object on my Warp 4.0 WPS to call it clicking. I encourage you to jump SemWare web site to download the demo of TSE Pro 2.50e. Try it, register it!

Click here to see the TSE Pro 2.50e illustrated report>###

TSEFile is a file manager for TSE, implemented exclusively using TSE's

own macro programming language SAL (SemWare Applications Language).

It allows you to execute all basic

file management tasks without leaving TSE, e.g. copying, renaming and

deleting files. You can view files in text and hex mode and navigate the

directory tree, which includes making and removing subdirectories.

Moreover, version 4.0 of TSEFile implements some advanced techniques,

which include:

* deleting, copying and moving directory trees,

* comparing files both binary and as lines of text,

* searching files by name and by text (grep),

* managing 4dos compatible file descriptions,

* running programs and associated files,

* managing archives (e.g. arj,lzh,zip).

TSEFile displays two directory listings (as the photo above shows). The highlight can be moved using the cursor keys and individual files can be (un-)marked with the <SpaceBar> or by <Left Clicking> them with the mouse. To switch the active list press the <Tab> key. To quickly locate a file, press one of the alphabetic keys and TSEFile will position you at the next entry in the list, that begins with the corresponding character. (To search backward use uppercase letters.) The contents of the lists can be filtered using wildcards and can be sorted in a variety of ways.

To view another directory, position the highlight on a directory name and press <Enter> or <Right Click> it with the mouse and choose Browse within the pop up menu. Larger jumps are available using the <F6> key. At the ensuing prompt you may enter relative or absolute paths. If you include a drive letter and a colon the current disk will also be changed (e.g., c:\tse will take you to the tse directory on drive c, no matter where you are). If you want to go to the parent directory, just press <Ctrl F6>. Finally, TSEFile keeps a list of the most recently active directories (<Alt F6>). You can use it to quickly go back to where you came from.

TSEFile manages a list of directories on your drives, which can also be used to change the current directory in a variety of ways. To configure which drives TSEFile should manage use Options|Drives. You can view a list of all directories on your drives (<Shift F9>) or only the current directory and its subdirectories (<F9>). Furthermore, if you enter a partial directory name at the <F6> prompt, TSEFile will display a list of directories, which it thinks comes closest to what you wanted. To change the current directory, highlight one of the list entries and press <Enter>. Pressing <Alt G> within the tree list will format the list to a graphical tree.

If you want to save one of the file lists either as soft or as hard copy, use Directory|Print. Finally, if you suspect, that TSEFile somehow became confused about what the contents of a directory really is, press <F5> and it will rebuild both directory listings from scratch.

Some statistical information on your current drive, directory and tree is also available (Directory|Info|Info, |Tree_Info and |Drive_Info). These boxes display things like: free disk space, number of marked files, summed file sizes and total space occupied by files.

Directory Management

To add a new directory press <Ins> and enter the directory name. This is undone using the <Del> key. Be careful, because TSEFile is capable of deleting subdirectory trees. TSEFile will always show a warning message though, when you try to remove a subdirectory tree. Using Directory Remove is a safer way to delete directories, because this command will only remove empty subdirectories.

TSEFile can also copy and move directories. Highlight or mark the source directory(ies) and press <Ctrl M> or <Ctrl C> and TSEFile will move or copy these directory(ies) including all of their subdirectories and files to the inactive directory. Again, moving will pop up a warning box. By the way, you cannot disable these "directory destruction" warnings, because recursive deletion IS dangerous.

Finally, you can rename a directory using the <F7> key.

File Management

Most of the file management commands use either the highlighted file or the marked file(s). In the latter case TSEFile ignores the highlighted file, if it is not marked.

You can copy and move files from the active to the inactive directory using <Ctrl C> or <Ctrl M>. Alternatively you can drag the current or the marked files with the mouse. Just click in the active window and move the mouse curser over to the inactive window without releasing the mouse button. This will move the files. If you additionally hold down the <Ctrl> key, the files will be copied instead. The indicator box shows you, what will happen and how many files will be affected.

You can rename or duplicate files using <F7> or <F8>. These commands also accept file paths, allowing you to rename files across directories (but not across disks). Finally, hit <Del>, if you want to delete somefiles. (Once again, look out for marked directories.)

Archiving files (<Ctrl A>) is also possible. Everything that is marked (or the current file) will be compressed and copied into an archive file. TSEFile will ask you for the name of the archive and pop up a list of predefined archivers to choose from. If you want to set up more archivers, see section 5.6 which explains how to do it.

You can change the attributes of files (File|Special|Attributes) and the date and time a file was last accessed (File|Special|Time). You can also display hidden and system files, which thereafter are affected normally by all file management commands. But please remember, there is always a reason for files having the hidden and/or system attribute. Deleting or moving these files might result in a complete crash of your machine. You have been warned!

Comparing Files

Files can be compared both in binary mode and as text files. Binary comparison (<Ctrl-O>) works similar to the copy command, which means that everything that is marked in the active file list will be compared to the corresponding item in the inactive list. This includes comparing subdirectories and all the files they contain.

After the comparison has finished, TSEFile tells you either that all the files were identical or it pops up a list showing all the differences found. This list contains the full path of the file and an indication of what is wrong.

ok files identical (c.f. option Show_Comp_Ok)

directory the directory was not found in the inactive list

missing the file was not found in the inactive list

length the file sizes differ

###### the position of the first mismatching byte

Comparing text files works on a line to line basis, in contrast to binary comparison, which works on a one to one basis. Position the highlight on the file you want to compare and press <F4>. TSEFile (in fact TSEComp) will then ask for the name of the second file. Press <Enter> and you will be put into an environment, which allows you to compare and update two text files. This environment is a stand alone macro named TSEComp. It may also be called from the command line or can be executed directly from within TSE. See the file TSEComp.DOC for further instructions.

Browsing and Launching

If you want to inspect the contents of one of your files, press <Enter> or <Right Click> it and choose Browse within the pop up menu and TSEFile will display the file in text mode. <Shift Enter> will do the same, except that TSEFile will put you in hex mode. Once you are inside browsing mode, you can toggle between hex and text display pressing the <Enter> key or <Left Clicking>. If you want to edit a file, press <F3> to load it or <Shift F3> to to load it and simultaneously quit the file manager.

Actually, something completely different could happen after pressing <Enter> depending on the extension of the current file. If the current file is a program, it will simply be executed in a dos shell. If it is a SAL macro, TSEFile will be terminated and the macro will be executed. If you want to force TSEFile into text browsing use <CtrlShift Enter>.

Furthermore, there is a list of so-called associations, which determines which application should be used to view files with certain extensions. If you ever used the Windows file manager, you know what these associations are. Simply put, if you view an associated file, the corresponding application is launched with the filename as a command line argument. This will run the program and simultaneously load the file. E.g., if you associated the file extension "pas" with a program named "bp.exe", then <Right Clicking> the file "example.pas" and choosing Browse would run "bp.exe" and would automatically load the "example.pas" file into bp. Associations are stored in a file named TSEFile.APP and can be edited using Options|Associations.

Associations can be used to set up archive viewers. The associations setup menu has a submenu Archive. If you leave the entries of this submenu blank, you made a normal association, which just launches an application with the current filename as an argument. But, if you fill in the entries of the Archive menu, you make an archive viewer.

An archive viewer is set up as follows. The extract and delete command are exactly that, the commands used to extract or delete a file from the archive. "Skip Until" and "Skip From" are regular expressions, which define the portions at the top and bottom of the archive listing which should be ignored. "Name Filter" is a regular expression which defines where the filename can be found in a line of the archiver listing. Archive and Recursive Archive, finally, are the commands use to add files to a new or an existing archive. Recursive archiving means that a subdirectory and everything below it is archived (including file paths).

When TSEFile compresses or extracts files, it prepares a temporary file, which contains all the files you have marked for processing (one file at a line). This means that an archive program usable by TSEFile must be capable of bulk processing, e.g. it must have a command line switch which defines a response file. This command line switch _must_ be the last letter of the extract and archive commands.

TSEFile comes with an association file, which contains archiver setups for three of the most popular archiver programs (arj, lzh and zip). The rest of the associations serve mainly as examples on how to do it.

Finally, you can launch any file within any application by pressing <Ctrl Enter>. TSEFile will then ask you which program should handle the current file.

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