User`s guide
WHAT IS A DIRECTORY?
CHAPTER3
DIRECTORIES
One
of
the primary advantages
of
a disk drive
is
that it can, with nearly equal ease
and speed, access any part
of
a diskette
's
surface, and jump quickly from one spot
to
another. A DATASSETTE™, on the other hand, usually reads a cassette
file
from
th
e
beginning
to
the end, without skipping around. To see what's on a cassette,
it
is
necessary
to
look at its entire length, which could take
as
long
as
an
hour. On a disk drive, by way of
contrast,
it
is a quick and simple matter
to
view a list
of
the programs and data files on a
diskette. This list
is
called
the
directory.
VIEWING THE DIRECTORY: BASIC 2
To view the directory
in
Basic 2, it
is
usually necessary
to
load it, like a program. As
when you load other programs, this erases anything
.µready
in
Basic memory, so be sure
to save any work you don't want
to
lose before loading the directory in Basic 2. (Chapter 4
describes how
to
Save a program.)
For example,
to
load the entire directory
from
disk device 8, type:
LOAD"$"
,8
Then, to display' the directory on your screen after
it
loads into computer memory,
type
LIST. You may slow the listing
by
pressing the CONTROL key on the VIC 20 and
Commodore 64, and halt
it
entirely
by
pressing the STOP key.
You can also use this command
to
limit the directory
to
desired
files
by
using pattem-
matching characters described later
in
this chapter.
VIEWING
THE
DIRECTORY: BASIC 3.5
To view the directory
in
Basic 3.5, simply type the word DIRECTORY on a blank
line, and press the
RETURN key. Unlike Basic 2's method
of
loading a directory, this
does not erase anything
already
in
Basic memory, so you can safely ask for a directory at
almost any time, even from within another program.
Again, you may slow a directory listing
on
the Commodore
16
and Plus/4
by
holding
down the
COMMODORE key (
(k
),
or halt
it
entirely
by
pressing the STOP key. You
may also pause
it
with CONTROL-S (by holding down the CONTROL key while pressing
the
"S"
key), and resume
by
pressing any other key.
WHAT A DIRECTORY SHOWS
Now let's look
at
a typical directory
on
your
1541
Test/Demo
Diskette:
18
READY.
e
14
•HOW
TO
USE"
PRG
12
•How PART
2•
PRG
12
•How
PART
3•
PRG
4
•v1c-20
WEDGE"
PRG
•c-64
WEOGE•
PRG
..
•oos
~.
1 •
PRG
IMPORTANT
NOTE:
9
•PRINTER
TEST•
PRG
Your Test/Demo diskette
4
•DISK
ADDR
CHANGE"
PRG
may
contain
additional
6
•VIEW
BAM•
PRG
programs.
Commodore
may update the diskette
4
•cHECK
DISK•
PRG
from time to time.
14
•o
ISPL.A'lf
T&S
•
PRG
9
•PERFORMAl'CE
TEST•
PRG
~
•SEQ.FIL.E.DEMO•
PRG
7
•so.BACKUP.C16•
PRG
7
•so.BACKUP.PL.US4•
PRG
10
·sD.BACKUP.C64•
PRG
7
•PRINT.64.UTIL.•
PRG
7
•PRINT.C16.UTIL."
PRG
7
•pRINT.+4.UTIL.•
PRG
30
•cs4
BASIC
DEMO·
PRG
3S
•+4
BASIC
DEMO•
PRG
8
•L.OAD
ADDRESS• PRG
7
•uNSCRATCH•
PRG
~
•HEADER
CHAJIGE•
PRG
10
•REL.FILE.OEMO•
PRG
426
BLOCKS
FREE.
Starting with the top line, here
is
what it tells
us
:
The
Oat
the left end tells
us
that the 1541
's
single drive
is
drive 0.
If
we had gotten
this directory from a dual disk drive, it might have said
"I"
instead. .
The next thing on the top line
of
the directory after the format type
1s
the name
of
the
diskette, enclosed
in
quotation marks, and printed
in
reverse field. Just
as
each program
has
a name, so does the diskette itself, assigned when the diskette was formatted.
1:11e
diskette name may be up to
16
characters long, and serves mainly
to_
help you
o~gan1ze
your diskette library. By keeping related files together on the same diskette, you
ll
ease
the
task
of
finding the program you want later, when you have dozens or hundreds
of
diskettes. The two character code
to
the right
of
the name
is
the diskette ID, also created
when the diskette was formatted, and equally useful for individualizing diskettes.
The
2A
at the right end
of
the top line tells
us
that the 1541 uses version
_2
of
Commodore's DOS (disk operating system), and that it, like most Commodore drives,
uses format
''A.''
19