Batch File Compression
You can compress your batch files with a program called BATCOMP.EXE, which
is distributed with CMD.EXE. This program condenses batch files by about
a third and makes them unreadable with the LIST command and similar
utilities. Compressed batch files run at approximately the same speed as
regular .BTM files.
You may want to consider compressing batch files if you need to distribute
them to others and keep your original code secret or prevent your users
from altering them. You may also want to consider compressing batch files
to save some disk space on the systems where the compressed files are
used.
The full syntax for the batch compression program is
BATCOMP [/O] input file [output file ]
You must specify the full name of the input file, including its extension,
on the BATCOMP command line. If you do not specify the output file,
BATCOMP will use the same base name as the input file and add a .BTM
extension. BATCOMP will also add a .BTM extension if you specify a base
name for the output file without an extension. For example, to compress
MYBATCH.CMD and save the result as MYBATCH.BTM, you can use any of these
three commands:
[c:\] batcomp mybatch.cmd
[c:\] batcomp mybatch.cmd mybatch
[c:\] batcomp mybatch.cmd mybatch.btm
If the output file (MYBATCH.BTM in the examples above) already exists,
BATCOMP will prompt you before overwriting the file. You can disable the
prompt by including /O on the BATCOMP command line immediately before the
input file name. Even if you use the /O option, BATCOMP will not compress
a file into itself.
JP Software does not provide a decompression utility to decompress batch
files. If you use BATCOMP.EXE, make sure that you also keep a copy of the
original batch file for future inspection or modification.
BATCOMP is a DOS and OS/2 character-mode application designed to run in
any environment where our command processors run. Each of our command
processors includes the same version of BATCOMP.EXE, and a batch file
compressed with any copy of BATCOMP can be used with any current JP
Software command processor.
You can adopt one of two strategies for keeping track of your original
source files and compressed batch files. First, you may want to create
the source files with a traditional .BAT or .CMD extension and reserve the
.BTM extension for compressed batch files. The advantage of this approach
is that you can modify and test the uncompressed versions at any time,
although they will run in the slower, traditional mode unless they begin
with a LOADBTM command.
If you prefer, you can use a .BTM extension for both the source and
compressed files. In this case you will have to use a different directory
or a different base name for each file. For example, you might use
SOURCE\MYBATCH.BTM for the source file and COMP\MYBATCH.BTM for the
compressed version, or use MYBATCHS.BTM for the source file and
MYBATCH.BTM for the compressed file (however, the latter approach may make
it more difficult to keep track of the correspondence between the source
file and the compressed file).
Each of our command processors includes its own version of BATCOMP.EXE,
set up to run under the corresponding operating system. However, the
output produced by each program is the same, so a batch file compressed
with any version of BATCOMP can be used with any JP Software command
processor.
If you plan to distribute batch files to users of different platforms, see
Special Character Compatibility.
Created using Inf-PHP v.2 (c) 2003 Yuri Prokushev
Created using Inf-HTML v.0.9b (c) 1995 Peter Childs