ok so im looking for something that searches for files with the same basic name and marks all the ones it finds as read only... it has to be quick, and i can specify the dir for it to look into

It would be really easy to make a shell script to do that...if only windows had shell scripting...

Well, if you're running .NET 2.0 you can write "shell scripts for Windows"...

32b MSH ~ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... layLang=en
64b MSH ~ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... layLang=en
MSH Docs ~ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

No, I'm not a big fan... but this is considerably better than using batch-files.

You could also install Perl or Ruby for Windows.

Do you have any experience with Ruby?

I've heard lots of good things; may play with it some this summer.

I've read lots of introductory stuff and messed around. Nothing serious, although I do have all the Ruby-MySQL, PostgreSQL, GTK and TK bindings installed on my Ubuntu box. I was going to get more serious about it, and then I got laid off from my old job and got hired by another company and it looks like I'll be doing Java programming now, so I had to suspend my Ruby tinkerings to pick up Java.

I usually prefer programming languages that are not very English-oriented. That's not to say I suck at English. Tossing modesty aside, I think I have a better grasp of English than at least 98% of my peers. However, English is English, and computer is computer. I picked up the syntax rules for FORTRAN, C, C++ and assembly really quickly. I struggle to get the syntax of SQL and COBOL right (though I will admit, given correct SQL or COBOL statements, it's really easy to figure out what they do). It's the writing part that's difficult for me. Ruby is just English oriented enough to keep me on my toes, but still grounded in "computer" that it's easy to see the patterns. I think if I sat down and memorized the usual Ruby iterators that the English parts of it would stop giving me trouble.

For example, a 5 iteration loop in C would look like:

A 5 iteration loop in Ruby looks like:


That's an example of an iterator (with a block) in Ruby. Blocks look like one of the most interesting parts of the language. They're like "super function pointers".

And then there's Rake. It's like make, except you just write ordinary Ruby in your rakefile instead of hyper-whitespace-sensitive-cryptic-error-messages make-language in your makefile.

So, will it make it in the commercial world? Maybe. I kind of hope it does; I also hope I'll have some time in the future to really play with it.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Makefile syntax. I do like having (control of / a feel for) the building and linking process, however... so I tend to shy away from Visual Studio and bang out Makefiles anyway (it seems like Visual Studio tries to hide too much from me with overtabbed project settings dialogs).

This might be blasphemy, but I'd really like to see a new Make. I dream of a Make that interprets a simple XML file-format to take care of dependencies... no more newline and tab sensitivity... no more more @'s and <'s and general weirdness.


"make MyCoolProgram" or something...

You might want to check out Apache Ant if you want an XML-driven "like make" program.

Also, when I get home, I'll post a rakefile that I wrote to replace the makefile that I used back in 2001 to build Mikelab for CS236 (back when Hilgers taught it).

You might also be interested in Jam files

What the hell?

If its windows, use the command line and try:

attrib +R "FILENAMESTRING" /S

make FILENAME something with *s for wildcards like thelogfile*.txt for all text files that start with "thelogfile" for a filename.

I'll go through the current directory and all subdirectories and set read-only attribute on all of them. Use cd to switch to other directories, of course.


OR you can go through a bunch of crud to do it.

No, he wants to FIND the ones that are read only. Not make them all read only.

the way i read it is he wants to find certain files with the same basic name and mark them readonly

He wants the program to find all files with the same basic name and "marks [them] read only"

oh... I guess I emphasized in the wrong way. I thought he meant search for some files with similar names, and return the ones that are read only. I lose @ the intrawebs.