The OS/2 Command Line Utilities

anaclock is a simple Presentation Manager analogue clock program, with full support for timezones and automatic (and effortless) switching to and from daylight savings time.

arcstamp modifies the timestamp of archive files to match the latest modification date of the files in the archive. It performs the same function as the -o option to zip or the /ZIPDATE option to pkzip, except that it supports multiple archive types with one uniform command syntax, can restrict the timestamp processing to particular files within the archive that match given wildcards, and can stamp multiple archive files that match a particular wildcard, optionally recursing into subdirectories to find them.

arcdir displays the contents of archives. It performs much the same function as the l or -view option to many archiving tools, except that one tool supports multiple archive types with one uniform command syntax, can list files within the archive matching particular wildcards, can sort the listing, and can even produce a single (sorted) list of the contents of multiple archive files that match a particular wildcard, optionally recursing into subdirectories to find them.

attrib is an enhanced, 32-bit, replacement for IBM's 16-bit attrib command. It includes, amongst other enhancements, extended wildcards, the ability to include and exclude files by attribute, and the ability to modify the attributes of subdirectories as well as files.

bcomp is a simple binary byte-for-byte comparison of two files.

calctz is a Presentation Manager utility to help calculate the TZ environment variable string for any given timezone and daylight savings time rules. Unlike other TZ calculators, this command calculates a TZ string that is in the standard POSIX 1003.1 (ISO/IEC 9445-1:1990) format.

comp is an enhanced, 32-bit, replacement for OS/2's 16-bit COMP command. It doesn't prompt the user, so can be used in command scripts, and has a more compact output format so that differences are easier to spot. It can also recurse into subdirectories to compare entire directory trees; and it supports extended wildcards.

convcase renames filenames to upper, lower, or mixed case, which is handy in those situations where other programs insist upon creating all-uppercase or all-lowercase filenames. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

cpuidg is a Presentation Manager program to display the information obtained about the CPU by the CPUID instruction, including the various AMD and Cyrix extensions.

cpuidt is a text-mode program to display the information obtained about the CPU by the CPUID instruction, including the various AMD and Cyrix extensions.

cyclog is a daemon that logs whatever it receives on its input to a set of log files, keeping a cap on the space that they consume by recycling the oldest logs.

deltree is a REXX wrapper script for the xdel command that behaves much like the deltree command in MS-DOS and DR-DOS does.

dellname removes the long names that are stored in the extended attributes of files and directories by Workplace Shell programs. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

delthumb removes the thubmnail icon images that are stored in the extended attributes of files and directories by some programs. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

descedit is a Presentation Manager program to display the descriptions for files and directories store in extended attributes, and to allow them to be easily modified. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

digclock is a simple Presentation Manager digital clock program, with a fully configurable display format and full support for timezones and automatic (and effortless) switching to and from daylight savings time.

dirsize displays the sizes of directories, much like the GNU `du' command does, but with the standard CLU features such as enhanced wildcards and the ability to include/exclude files by attribute, and with the same simple, consistent, PC-style, interface of the other utilities that should be familiar to OS/2 users. It also displays the actual true "allocated space" figures when used on large FAT volumes.

dump dumps the contents of many types of file, including the popular ARC, ARJ, LZH, RAR, ZIP, and ZOO archive file formats, PKT files (used for mail transfer on Fidonet), executable and DLL files, and Intel object module files (OBJ and LIB files).

dupdir brings a target directory into synchronisation with a source directory by copying new or newer files and deleting files that no longer exist. Supports recursing into subdirectories, so that entire directory trees can be synchronised, and the standard CLU features such as enhanced wildcards and the ability to include/exclude files by attribute.

ff is a versatile yet simple and fast file finder, that is also capable of locating files that are contained within ARC, ARJ, LZH, RAR, ZIP, and ZOO archives. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

find is a REXX wrapper for the grep command that can replace OS/2's 16-bit find command, searching for lines in text files that contain a given string. It has the standard CLU features of being able to operate recursively on files in subdirectories and include/exclude files by attribute. It can also has a "brief" display format, and the ability to display counts of the number of lines found.

finddups locates files that are exact duplicates of one another, even if they have different names and timestamps. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

fitsize groups files into bundles that don't exceed a given total size. It is useful for burning CD-ROMs, or collecting files onto LS-120 super-floppy discs.

grep finds lines that match a given pattern in text files, much like the GNU egrep command, but with the standard CLU features. It implements almost the entire POSIX "extended" regular expression syntax -- far more than most other grep utilities, which usually only provide the POSIX "basic" syntax.

head outputs the first few lines of its input, which can either be a number of files specified on its command line or its standard input. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

help is an enhanced, REXX, replacement for OS/2's HELP command (which is a "batch file"). It won't upset customised PROMPT strings, and doesn't require the 16-bit HELPMSG program in order to function. It also allows the command reference on-line book that is used by default to be configured via the CMDREF environment variable.

mem displays various memory usage statistics maintained by the operating system, along with the size of the current environment area.

newmbr writes a new Master Boot Record, enabling enhanced features in one boot manager, to a partitionable disc.

partlist displays the entire, unmodified, contents of the partition table on one or all of the available partitionable disc devices, including the partition names. Unlike FDISK /QUERY, the partition table is displayed in raw uninterpreted form, with the partition sizes displayed in numbers of sectors, rather than being converted to KiB.

The /FIXCHS option will fix some of the more common errors caused by disc geometry changes (which can occur when a disc is moved from one machine to another or when a different make of SCSI host adapter is used, for example).

The /FIXTYPES option will turn type 0F extended partitions, which IBM OS/2 cannot understand, into type 05 extended partitions, which it can.

playmorse plays Morse code through the PC speaker. The dot speed and beep frequency are configurable, and the code can optionally be displayed as it is played.

playtune plays a tune through the PC speaker. No more messing around converting a tune to a series of numbers for BEEPs! And no more need to run QBASIC in a VDM, which eats CPU time, just to play a tune! The tune is given in a format compatible with the "PLAY" statement in the BASIC language and with so-called "ANSI music" as used by several BBS and offline mail and comms utilities.

pmlock programmatically invokes the Presentation Manager descktop lockup.

resetini removes the read-only attribute from the user and system INI files, and then instructs Workplace Shell to reload them. It is useful as an aid to recovery if an incomplete shutdown has left the INI files read-only by accident. It also has the side-effect of closing and re-opening the WPS Desktop folder without restarting the system.

runsvc is a service manager, to control services. The Service Manager spawns and terminates the service process under remote control from the service control utility. The environment, working directory, arguments, and name of the service program are read from a configuration file and may all be modified on the fly, allowing a service to be taken down, reconfigured, and restarted without restarting the system as a whole.

saydate displays the current, or any given, date and time, with a fully configurable display format and full support for timezones and automatic (and effortless) switching to and from daylight savings time. The date and time commands built in to IBM's 16-bit cmd cannot be used in command scripts to display the date and time without some ugliness, because they prompt for input. This command can be!

service controls services by sending commands to their service managers.

setbootg is a Presentation Manager configuration utility for IBM's and other compatiable boot managers.

setdate allows the hardware real-time clock to be set from a date or time expressed as local time in any arbitrary timezone. It also sets the date and time simultaneously, avoiding race conditions in command scripts when used near midnight.

signal sends OS/2 signals to processes.

sort is an enhanced, 32-bit, replacement for OS/2's 16-bit sort command. It can sort up to the size of available virtual memory and has no 64KiB limit, can also sort files named on the command line, and supports extended wildcards and the other standard CLU features. It's also quicker!

strings displays embedded strings of characters in files, which is particularly useful for searching binary files for text strings. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including and excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

sum calculates CRC-16, CRC-32, two different types of checksum (UNIX BSD and System V), and the MD5 fingerprint for files. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

tail outputs the last few lines of its input, which can either be a number of files specified on its command line or its standard input. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

tasklist lists the contents of the PM Window List in text form, suitable for parsing, or use from text-mode programs.

tee is a "T-shaped" pipe fitting, that sends its standard input to its standard output, writing or appending a copy of it to one or more files named as its arguments.

textconv converts text files from one code page and newline convention to another. It makes it easy to interchange text files between OS/2 and Usenet, the Macintosh, and UNIX/linux, or between OS/2 users in different countries with different code pages. It supports code page 1004 in particular, in order that one can convert text files from other code pages to ISO 8859 Latin-1.

tomorse converts text files to Morse code suitable for piping into the playmorse command. It can be used as part of a command pipeline, and supports the standard CLU features of being able to recurse into subdirectories and include/exclude files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

touch changes the last modification, last access, or creation timestamp of files and directories. It can override read-only protection, and it supports the standard CLU features of being able to recurse into subdirectories and include/exclude files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

tree is an enhanced 32-bit replacement for OS/2's 16-bit tree command. Unlike the latter, this command actually displays a tree! It can also display size information, and be limited to using only ASCII characters instead of character graphics. It also supports extended wildcards.

uniq displays files, eliminating multiple occurrences of the same line. It can operate either locally, only eliminating consecutive duplicate lines, or globally, eliminating all duplicate lines; and supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

unstamp displays files, converting encoded timestamps of the form used in log files, to human-readable form in the current - or an arbitrary - timezone. It supports the standard CLU features of extended wildcards, inclusion and exclusion of files by attributes, and recursion into subdirectories.

w2kfix alters IBM's Boot Managers in situ in such a way that Microsoft's Windows NT 2000 no longer recognises and overwrites them each time it is booted.

watchlog monitors one or a suite of log files generated by CYCLOG, writing all logged data to its standard output, suitable for passing through a pipe to other commands (such as UNSTAMP).

wc counts the number of lines, words, letters, characters, and bytes in files. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards.

weavesvc weaves a tapestry of services, managed by service managers, interconnecting them via pipes. The tapestry is configurable. The Service Weaver allows services to be easily connected to instances of CYCLOG to log their output to log files.

what finds any embedded SCCS identifying strings in files.

which finds out what would be executed if a given command name were used. It knows about commands that are built into the 16-bit CMD, 32-bit CMD, and 4OS2 command interpreters, and obeys the PATHEXT environment variable.

winsight displays the hierarchy of Presentation Manager windows as a tree structure, showing window handles, parents, owners, process and thread IDs, styles, IDs, types, and text.

xdel deletes files. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards. It can also remove empty subdirectories, override read-only protection, and wipe the contents of files before deleting them in order to prevent them from being successfully undeleted.

xdir displays directory listings. It supports the standard CLU features of recursing into subdirectories, including/excluding files by attribute, and extended wildcards. It can also sort files from multiple subdirectories into one big list, allowing one to see all files in multiple subdirectories sorted together by size for example, and has no arbitrary limits on the number of files that it can process.

y is a "Y-shaped" pipe fitting, that concatenates its standard input with one or more files and sends the result to its standard output. It can also be used as a more powerful replacement for the type command built into IBM's 16-bit CMD command interpreter, since it supports the standard CLU features of extended wildcards, inclusion and exclusion of files by attributes, and recursion into subdirectories.