FitDisk V2.0, 16-Okt-1993, Christian Stieber

FitDisk  is placed in the PUBLIC DOMAIN.  You may do whatever you want with
it.

FitDisk V2.0 requires AmigaOS V37 or later.
A  special  version  may  be  compiled that is functionally equivalent, but
requires AmigaOS V39 or later.  This produces a smaller executable.

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Do you have many disks with archives on them lying around?  All those disks
have  space  left  on  them,  but you don't feel like spending lots of time
trying  to  figure out how to arrange the files so the will fill your disks
as much as possible? Well, here is a possible solution.

Whenever  I need to put things on floppies to archive them, I put them into
a  special  directory on my HD first.  Every now and then, I use FitDisk on
that  directory to find out which files to copy to a floppy.  Of course, if
I  delete a file from a floppy, I can use FitDisk to find files to fill the
gap.   That  way,  almost  all  my  floppies  are  filled  to their maximum
capacity:  they have all "1 block free" (the Amiga filesystem seems to need
that free block).

FitDisk reads the directory, and tells you which files will fill up a given
number of blocks.  It uses 2 criteria:
1) it attempts to use as many blocks as possible.
2) it attempts to use as few files as possible   (i.e. it attempts to use a
   few big files instead of many small files).

I  tried  to  optimize  the algorithm to make it work reasonably fast (V1.0
used  a  brute-force  algorithm, checking all combinations...).  However, I
hope that none of my shortcuts will backfire at you...

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Usage:
   FitDisk BLOCKS/N,DIRECTORY=DIR,OFS/S,MSDOS/S

BLOCKS:    The  number of blocks you want to fill.  Defaults to 1756 for
           Amiga-disks and 1426 for MS-DOS-disks, which
           is  an  empty  disk.   NOTE:   Due  to  a  bug  in  all  current
           (Fast)FileSystems (up to, and including, V40.1, and probably the
           ones  above  that  as well), you will get a "Disk full" error if
           you  format  a  disk and then write the files that FitDisk tells
           you   to  write.   THIS  IS  NOT  A  FITDISK-BUG!   The  easiest
           work-around  is  to  write (n-1) files, issue a "DiskChange" (or
           remove  and re-insert the disk) and write the last file.  If you
           only  write one file (the longest file you can write to an empty
           disk is 886272 bytes), simpy wait for the "Disk full" requester,
           do the DiskChange, and "Retry".

DIRECTORY: The directory where your files are.  Subdirectories are ignored,
           since  subdirectories  on  archive-disks  only  take up valuable
           space.  Defaults to the current directory.

OFS:       Specify  this  if you are using DOS/0 or DOS/2 (Old file system)
           disks.   I  recommend using DOS/1 or DOS/3 (Fast file system) on
           all  disks,  since  it gives you more capacity.  DOS/4 and DOS/5
           (Directory    caching)    disks   are   not   supported,   since
           directory-caching  doesn't  make  sense  for archive-disks -- it
           only  reduces the available capacity.  Besides that, it is a lot
           harder  to  support  directory-  caching-disks,  since you can't
           really tell how much space a file requires.

MSDOS:     Use this if you want to copy files to an MS-DOS-disk. Useful for
           making distribution-disks to be uploaded to a FTP server.

FitDisk cannot be run from Workbench -- it will simply crash.

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I  alomst  forgot  that:   APPLY ALL DISCLAIMERS YOU CAN THINK OF.  I'M NOT
RESPONSIBLE  FOR  ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS BECAUSE OR WHILE OR AFTER OR BEFORE
YOU ARE USING FITDISK.

However,  if you experience any problems with this little proggy, feel free
to  tell me (EMail preferred, if you send paper-mail, I won't answer unless
you  include  postage  (if  you don't want to include postage, you may send
A4000s,  A5000s,  gold,  silver,  platinum,  diamonds, aircraft, cars...  I
don't really care).

Mail sent to this address _will_ reach me, but it may take a while:
   Christian Stieber
   Konradstraße 41
   D-85055 Ingolstadt
   (Germany)

Currently I'm a student; you might be able to reach me at
   Christian Stieber
   Seitzstraße 6 / Zi 306
   D-80538 München
   (Germany)

   Phone: 089-292732
   Internet: stieber@informatik.tu-muenchen.de