TO.COM
======

An excellent utility for those (like me) who dislike unneccesary 
keystrokes!  It uses an NCD-compatible directory list to shortcut
your changes of directory, which can be done by typing only the 
subdirectory name.  You can even abbreviate the subdirectory name and 
get a menu of matching places to CD to.  If you wish, you can set up 
TO to work across logical drives to find your target directory.

I found this utility on the UK CIX system, with a note that a couple
of different people may have modified it since the author last saw 
it.  I found a lot more small things that needed fixing - mainly in 
the area of error checking.  Also, the program had evidently been 
written with a small hard disk in mind and the capacities were 
nothing like enough.

I hope that I have made the program a bit more robust now, though I
expect there are more things I have failed to spot.  I have tried it 
on several machines with no problems yet.  See the source file for a 
summary of changes.  The documentation file is as I received it, but 
I have updated the built-in help to reflect my changes.

I have sent a copy of the revised source to the author in Italy.  If
you make further improvements, I suggest that you do the same!


Tim Frost, Roundhill Computer Systems Limited
Bix: tfrost
Cix: tfrost

=========================================================================
Notes for Version 2.0
 7 July 1994

This is one of the two or three utilities I use most; when I am using
someone else's computer I really feel lost without it!  I made a few
changes as follows:

 o Fixed a bug which appeared when you have more than 255 directories
   on a disk.  Basically, only the first 255 directories were
   accessible to TO.

 o Added a printout of how many directories are in each partition when 
   the directory file, TREEINFO.NCD, is rebuilt. 

 o Added approximate string search using the Ratcliff/Obershelp
   algorithm for finding a list of possible directories to switch to.
   This algorithm takes two strings and returns a number rating how
   "similar" they are.  It does an amazingly good job of finding
   what you are looking for despite random typing permutations and
   even major omissions and transpositions.  I have used the simil
   subroutine to make a command processor tolerant of spelling errors.

   If you really can't remember the directory name and don't feel like
   looking thru several hundred names, you can invoke this option with
   the -a switch and your best guess of the name of the directory to
   search for.  If there is no exact match (and why else would you want
   to use this option?), you are presented with a list of candidate
   directories ranked in order of "similarity".  Choose one by typing
   a number.

 o Made the program run faster by making the directory match code case
   insensitive.  It wasn't too slow before this change, at least on the
   computers that I use, but this is the innermost loop of the program
   and it was an easy change to make.

 o Updated the embedded documentation to mention the -a switch

I hope that you find this program to be as useful as I do; but if not,
you have the source to improve it.  Now, if only I could find a similar
utility for Windows.  Thanks to Andrea and Tim and all of the other
members of the "shareware group".

William Luitje
luitje@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us or luitje@m-net.arbornet.org

=========================================================================
Notes for Version 2.1
13 October 1994

Here's what is new in this version:

 o Added a progress indicator showing the directory being processed while 
   building TREEINFO.NCD.

 o The count of directories displayed included the root directory & hence
   was 1 too large.

 o Linked the program with a stack of 4096 bytes to provide more memory for 
   processing really large and deep directory structures.

 o peter.strickler@active.ch found and fixed the following bug.  When there 
   are more than 9 possible directories to change to TO will display a list 
   and ask you to pick one.  Version 2.0 would not let you choose the ninth 
   choice. 

 o TO can now find and change to hidden subdirectories

BUGS:  I have had a report from a person with a large hard drive who was 
unable to use the TO.INI file method for setting the list of hard drives to
search. I have been unable to reproduce this problem.  If you experience it
try using the environment variable method and get in contact with me about
your setup.

William Luitje
luitje@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us or luitje@m-net.arbornet.org

=========================================================================
Notes for Version 2.2
22 February 1995

The only change for this version is either a new feature or bug fix depending 
on your outlook.  Previously, when the program found a match for the given 
directory name in the database it attempted a change to that directory but 
didn't check to see if the change was successful.  Of course, if the directory 
had been deleted since the TREEINFO.NCD file had been rebuilt last, the result 
is that you are dropped into the current directory of the drive that the 
target directory had been on.  This version simply checks the result of the 
change directory command and prompts you to rebuild the database if it was not 
successful. 

William Luitje - luitje@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us