EBL-Plus Mail

In each issue of EBL User News, we'd like to keep you informed of important message threads that have appeared on the BAT-BBS or on Internet.

Turning off the BBS lights

With our transition to verion 4.09 of EBL-PLUS, we are also making changes to how we operate the BBS. We are sad to say after 12+ years of operating the BAT-BBS, we have decided to turn off the PC and connect instead to the internet. This was done for several reasons:

Long live the I-BBS

The first BAT-BBS was set up in 1984 and operated from two floppy diskettes on a PC-1 with a 1200 baud modem. There were several equipment upgrades over the years, and I think we can all view this as the ultimate upgrade.... the Internet-BBS.

We will post mail of general interest here, and add comments to our on-going list of Q&A's to help others. Send your comments to seaware@yahoo.com. Due to outside business pressures, I can no longer promise when I will be able to reply, however mail will be checked about once each week. Please be aware I have every interest in helping, although on many occasions recently I have not gotten the time required to be timely. Before it happens again, I apologise.

I-BBS Mail

This mail is actually from the BAT-BBS and is of general interest.

Extended Variables

Msg # 575 Dated 06-05-90 08:44:44
From: ROGER STRIKER
To: SYSOP
Re: EBL EXTENDED VARIABLES

I have experienced difficulties in using Extended variables in
some EBL expressions or constructs. I have found some situations where the Extended Variables do not function in the same fashion as the EBL Internal Variables. I have sent you a file containing segments of a .BAT file which will show which constructs I am having trouble with, and how I bypassed the problem; file name is EBLEXTRS.TXT. Also included in this file are copies of my CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. I like working with EBL, its basic concepts are relative easy to grasp, but a user can continue to learn new and better ways to use it for a long time into the future. Thanks for a good product; I look foreward to hearing from you.

Ed: The following file is a portion of EBLEXTRS.TXT that Roger uploaded to demonstrate the problem.

locate 1 25
read.parsed &cmd %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9 * <<--- this works OK
%c = &cmd
if &cmd. = . then goto -select * <<--- different than "IF %C. = .
if &cmd # >> 2 then goto -command * <<--- this statement works
if verify(&cmd,"0123456789") >> 0 then goto -command * <<- also works
cls
goto -number&cmd * <<---- does not evaluate the same as
-command * "goto -number%c"
shell cls
shell &cmd %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9 * <<-- This causes an error
shell pause * saying "BATXV is needed
shell cd\ * If %c is used, it works.
shell c: *
shell cd\
goto -menu

Msg # 580 Dated 06-09-90 02:52:49
From: SYSOP
To: ROGER STRIKER
Re: EBL EXTENDED VARIABLES

Roger, Before BATXV was created, customers had all types of programs
written with special characters within strings. We decided to create the extended variable class as a "pure" variable that only stood alone and could not be appended to other literal characters. For example you tried to append "-number" and "&cmd" like "-number&cmd". Because extended variables can have a name that's any size, EBL can not determine if that is two literals "-number" and "md" concatenated with a variable "&c" or if it is something else. Because global variables are always one letter, your examples with "-number%c" will work OK. Therefore to continue to use a global variable, you should explicitly append it like: GOTO ( "-number" & &cmd ) This should work OK. The other problem I see is how you used it in a SHELL command. I think you've found a bug and am looking into this now. A temporary work around is to SHELL an expression like:
SHELL ( &cmd && %1 && %2 && %3 && %4 && %5 && %6 && %7 && %8 && %9 )
An extended variable within an expression for SHELL should work OK in this manner. Best regards, Frank Canova, Seaware

Ed: The bug Roger found in the SHELL command has been fixed in EBL-Plus version 4.01. The work around is no longer needed. We thank Roger for helping find it. The following file is similar to Roger's but shows what needs to be changed to fix the batch file. Note that the SHELL command was also removed from Roger's file. This is because SHELL is implicit for most DOS commands.

locate 1 25
read.parsed &cmd %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
%c = &cmd
if &cmd = "" then goto -select
if &cmd # >> 2 then goto -command
if verify(&cmd,"0123456789") then goto -command
cls
goto ( -number & &cmd )
-command
cls
shell &cmd %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
pause
cd\
c:
cd\
goto -menu

KEY() Function

Msg # 577 Dated 06-08-90 03:33:09
From: DONALD JEFFERSON
To: SYSOP
Re: EBL PLUS "KEY()" FUNCTION

I am having a problem with the EBL PLUS "KEY()" function. According to the EBL PLUS manual (p. 117), I should be able to use the "KEY()" function to put any "named" key into the keyboard stack. This has worked very well, except that I cannot figure out how to stack the "arrow" cursor-movement keys. Page 202 of Appendix D says I should use "CURSOR DOWN", etc., but when I do, one of two (bad) things happens: if I use quotation marks around "CURSOR DOWN", I get the text stacked, as expected; however, if I don't use quotation marks around "CURSOR DOWN", I get an EBL error which tells me that I'm missing a parenthesis. I assume that I'm doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what it is. Can you help me? Thank you very much.

Msg # 578 Dated 06-09-90 01:51:51
From: SYSOP
To: DONALD JEFFERSON
Re: KEY() FUNCTION

Donald, It's our mistake. We goofed on the documentation. The arrow keys should be listed as UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT. Not CURSOR UP, CURSOR DOWN, etc. in Appendix D. We will fix this in the manual. You should have no problem using the correct arrow key names in the KEY() function. Thanks for helping find this documentation error!
Best regards, Frank Canova, Seaware

Novell Network

Msg # 568 Dated 05-24-90 20:17:45
From: SEA TOMES
To: ALL
Re: NOVELL COMPATIBLITY

To all; I really love using EBL to construct menu's with but now that I have novell networks in house.... I am having a great deal of trouble with the conflicts between bat.com and novell... Can someone shed a little light on how to make bat.com and novell respect each other.. or am I asking for too much?
Jim Youngquist

Msg # 572 Dated 05-28-90 23:24:24
From: SYSOP
To: SEA TOMES
Re: EBL+NOVELL

Jim, Aparently Novell is frustrating to set up, however based on other user comments, persistence will pay. Part of the key is that you must start EBL on a different interrupt before the network starts. Something like this near the top of your AUTOEXEC should help:
SET BATINT=67
BAT /N
BAT LEAVE
If this doesn't help, please let us know your symptoms and I'll search our archives to see what other comments users have had which can help.
Best regards, Frank Canova, Seaware

Ed: Our archives indicate that customers are successfully using both Novell ELS-I Ver 2.0A and ELS-II. To make it work, it is important to not put any spaces before or after the equal sign '=' in the SET command.