Mtools ReadMe

This release of Mtools was ported by Robert Lewis to support SCO device names.

David MacKenzie (djm@eng.umd.edu) made changes to support the IBM RT under 4.3BSD (ACIS).

Mtools was written by Emmet P. Gray - US Army, HQ III Corps & Fort Hood. These tools have been in the public domain for many years and have enjoyed by many many people.


                                MTOOLS
                              version 2.0

Mtools is a public domain collection of programs to allow Unix systems
to read, write, and manipulate files on an MSDOS filesystem (typically a
diskette).

The following MSDOS commands are emulated:

Mtool                 MSDOS
name                equivalent        Description
-----                  ----           -----------
mattrib                ATTRIB        change MSDOS file attribute flags
mcd                    CD            change MSDOS directory
mcopy                  COPY          copy MSDOS files to/from Unix
mdel                   DEL/ERASE     delete an MSDOS file
mdir                   DIR           display an MSDOS directory
mformat                FORMAT        add MSDOS filesystem to a low-level format
mlabel                 LABEL         make an MSDOS volume label.
mmd                    MD/MKDIR      make an MSDOS subdirectory
mrd                    RD/RMDIR      remove an MSDOS subdirectory
mread                  COPY          low level read (copy) an MSDOS file to Unix
mren                   REN/RENAME    rename an existing MSDOS file
mtype                  TYPE          display contents of an MSDOS file
mwrite                 COPY          low level write (copy) a Unix file to MSDOS

You should be able to just close your eyes and pretend you're on an MSDOS
system.  Everything should work the same... except for the added 'm' at
the beginning of each command.

I really wanted to avoid the use of a 'text' mode and a 'data' mode when
transferring files, but I couldn't find a better way.  It gets rather
confusing and it's quite possible to mess up a file if you apply the
text mode when it is not appropriate (ie:  to a COM or EXE file).

The pattern matching routine more closely resembles Unix than MSDOS.
For example, "*" matches all MSDOS files in lieu of "*.*".

The use of wildcards (or the '\' separator) will require the names to be
enclosed in quotes to protect them from the shell.  For example:

        RIGHT:        mcopy "a:*.c" .

        will copy all files on the A: disk with the extension .C to the
        current Unix directory.

        WRONG:        mcopy a:*.c .

        will cause the shell to expand a:*.c in the current Unix directory
        (which is probably not what you wanted) then copy that list of
        files (if there were any) from A: to the current Unix directory.

        RIGHT:        mcopy *.c a:

        will copy all files with the extension .c in the current Unix
        directory to the A: drive.  (This time you *want* the shell
        the expand the *.c).

The manuals are very terse...  it's assumed that the reader is already
familiar with MSDOS.

Mcopy is really a front-end to the low level Mread and Mwrite commands.

Please *DO* read the Configure file and the Release.notes (that's why 
they're there...).

Emmet P. Gray                               US Army, HQ III Corps & Fort Hood
...!uunet!uiucuxc!fthood!egray              Attn: AFZF-DE-ENV
fthood!egray@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu               Directorate of Engineering & Housing
                             Environmental Management Office
                             Fort Hood, TX 76544-5057