Directory Sort utility

Does anybody remember the old Norton Utilites programs back in the 8-bit and 16-bit days?

The one I miss the most is the old DS utility where you could, at DOS, type in "DS -nedt" and it would instantly sort the file names in the current directory by (in this example) name, extension, date, and time.

Apprently Bill Gates doesn't believe that anybody uses a DOS window for file management anymore, because the filenames appear apparently in whatever order they were created.

Is there a utility like the old Norton DS that will work in a 32-bit Windows DOS shell? (Win98 or Win2K)

tanstaafl.

Um, built it. "dir /O:NEDS"

Edit: Do a "help dir" for more switches. Amazing. I didn't know all that was available...

The Norton program to which Doug is referring would actually set the order of the files as they appeared in the directory table so that you wouldn't have to add those parameters to every DIR command.

Do a "help dir" for more switches. Amazing. I didn't know all that was available...

I think the "Help <cmdname>" function disappeared from Windows about the time Win98 came out. Last time I was able to use that was either in Win 3.1 or Win 95. Doesn't work for me anymore.

But I do have a booklet I prepared "WINDOWS 95 COMMAND LINE FUNCTIONS" by doing what you suggested: "Help cmdname >> outfile" for each command, then prettied up the outfile with a word processor, printed it up and stapled it together. Been using it for at least 5 years now.

But wait a minute -- my booklet says: "Switches may be preset in the DIRCMD environment variable. Override preset switches by prefixing any switch with a hyphen."

What does this mean? How would I preset my switches in the DIRCMD environment variable?

tanstaafl.

In general:

set dircmd=/od/p

but you'll need to have it set for every shell, so in Win2k, you'd [Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables] and set it in there (no need for the `set' command here); there's one space for everyone and one for just you. In 98, I think you'll have to edit your autoexec.bat to contain the set command above.

set dircmd=/od/p

Or, in my case, set dircmd=/o:ned /p

I'll find out if it works the next time I reboot.

Thank you!

tanstaafl.

Correct and correct. Although the above program did it in such a way as to be the same no matter who you gave the disk to. (assuming they didn't have their own sort params set) It simply modified the FAT.

I use /O:GN, but it works fine for me.

hmm, "DOS Window"........ I think I remember that

'help dir' works in XP..

'help dir' also worked in Win 2000.

I use doskey to sort the dir: "doskey dir = dir /o $*" which I also use to add some unix commands like "ls" since I don't always remember what I'm doing.