LLL LLL L L LLLL LLLL LLLLL LLL LLL LLLL LLLLL L L L L L L L LL LL L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L LLLL LLLL LLLL LLL LLL LLLL LLLL L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L LLL LLL L L L L L LLLLL LLL LLL L L LLLLL L L L L L L LL LL L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L LL L LL (C) 1993-96 Robert Hofmann 1. Introduction =============== 1.1 Legal stuff --------------- CompressRexx is programm, to compress & speed-up ARexx-scripts. It is even possible to "convert" (not really ;-) ARexx-scripts into executables. The programs and files in this distribution are freely distributable, but are also Copyright (c) Robert Hofmann. They may be freely distributed as long as no more than a nominal fee is charged to cover time and copying costs. No commercial usage is permitted without written permission from the author. Everything in this distribution must be kept together, in original unmodified form and unmodified archive. CompressRexx is mailware :-). This means if you use it, please write me a short mail. You know, it is frustrating to write programs and there are no responses from the users if they like it or not... But of course money is also welcome. ;-) Accepting these few points is the only condition for using CompressRexx... ============================================================================= The author is not responsible for any problems caused by using this program! ============================================================================= 1.2 General stuff ----------------- I am not the best in writing doc, but quiet good in coding I think :-) This docs are a bit short I have to appolognize, but I hope you'll understand it anyway... Especially my English and the typo's ;-) If there is anybody out there who is able to & wants translate the docs to his own language, please do so and send them to me! I'll add them to the next release. Also translators always will get the newest betas! ;-) Unfortunatly I don't have the will & time to translate my docs even to German - my time is better used for coding :-) 1.3 Author ---------- If you have suggestions or remarks about this program, or if you find any bugs, please let me know. Contacting the author: Internet .. : robert@next.amistep.osn.de http://www.osn.de/user/amistep FidoNet ... : 2:2490/1015.0 AmigaNet .. : 39:171/101.0 Snail-mail : Robert Hofmann Poppenreuther Str. 26 D-90419 Nürnberg Tel. +49-(0)-911-338121 (18-20h German time only!!!) Germany Bank-Account: Account-holder: Robert Hofmann Account-number: 67920 Bank-ID ..... : 76090000 Bank-name ... : Volksbank Nuernberg e.G. 2. Features =========== CompressRexx... ... is able to compress & speed-up ARexx-code ... is able to convert an ARexx-Script into an executable 3. Usage ======== CompressRexx SCRIPT/A,CMPSCR/A,FORCE/S,MAXLEN/K/N,HEADER/S,EXEC/S,VERSION/S, CMPMODE/K SCRIPT name of the ARexx-script to compress CMPSCR name or dir of the new compressed script CMPMODE NORMAL or HEAVY (slower but more efficient) FORCE override all security-checks MAXLEN max. line-length for compression (>= 80 & <= 1024!!!) HEADER keep the header of the original ARexx-script from the first '/*' to the first '*/' EXEC convert the script to an executable file (see 4.2.) VERSION try to keep the version-info (see 4.3) IMPORTANT: 1. Make sure that ARexx is running before you use CompressRexx! Otherwise it will just quit without doing anything. 2. *NEVER* try to compress a script containing lines > 1000 bytes because such lines will be truncated to 1000 chars and the result is a corrupted "compressed" script. 4. Theory of operation ====================== 4.1 Compression --------------- CompressRexx will 'compress' the script by removing comments and multiple spaces. Depending on the coding style used in the script, compressing can produce substantial space savings, and may also make the resulting program/ script execute very slightly faster. The compression is done intelligently, with due allowance for nesting of both quotes and comments, and treating all quoted material as strictly literal. It will cause problems only for scripts that call the SOURCELINE built-in function or that depend on particular values of SIGL. Since v3.0 of CompressRexx, there is also an even better compression imple- mented - CMPMODE HEAVY. It is much slower than NORMAL, but it will strip all unnecessary spaces. Just try it out. :-) 4.2 Converting the script to an executable file ----------------------------------------------- The ARexx script is augmented with an assembler front end that passes the script to ARexx as a string file to be executed as a function. Why not execute it as a command? Because you can't give command-line arguments to a string file executed as a command. However, by treating the script as a function to which the command line is the sole argument, the command line can be accessed as ARG(1) (or equivalently with ARG or PARSE ARG) just as though you executed it with RX. The script is still contained in the executable file, starting a little more than 500 bytes in. The script will *NOT* be compiled into a real executable! You still need a working ARexx-enviorment. Also a big advantage of this methode is, that now, you can make even ARexx- scripts resident, what could be very usefull for often-called scripts. 4.3 The version of an ARexx-Script ---------------------------------- As you might know, it is possible to get the version via the 'version'-cmd even from an ARexx-Script, if it was added to the script like $VER: Test.rexx 1.0 (07.03.96) Even if you try 'version' on this document, you'll get this as version :-) Now if you use VERSION together with EXEC, CompressRexx will try to get the version of your script by using the command 'c:version'. If this was successful, it will add this version to the executable, so that you still can use the 'version'-command even on the executable. If you don't use EXEC, it is presummed, that you've already added the version -info to the header of your script. Use HEADER, to keep it. _ o Robert Hofmann 2:2490/1015@FidoNet 37:108/220@TrekNet |<)_/# 39:171/101@AmigaNet 107:1805/230@TrekNet TT