
                          Archive List and Date Stamp

  This program lists the contents  of  many  archive  formats  and  optionally
changes archive date stamps to that  of  the  latest  file  inside.  Supported
formats: ACE, ARC, ARJ, CAB, DWC, HA, HAP, HPK, HYP, LIM, LHA/LZH,  PAK,  RAR,
SQZ, YAC, ZIP and ZOO.

  WARNING: A 80386 or newer processor is required. The program does not  check
the CPU type automatically, it will probably lock up on machines based on 8086
and 80286 processors!



  1. Usage

  The parameter syntax is the following:

  ARCLDS [-|/<options>] <filename>

  <filename>:
  This is the full name of the archive file. You can use wildcards to  process
multiple archives. You may also use long file names.

  <options>:
  - D: Skip directory entries in archives. These will neither  be  listed  nor
       their date stamps taken into account.
  - G: Display a grand total at the end of the list.
  - L: When listing the contents of  archives,  display  the  full  file  name
       rather than cutting it to fit into the line.
  - P: Pause after each screenful of information.
  - S: Instead of listing the contents of archives, change their  date  stamps
       to that of the latest file inside.
  - V: Process multi-volume archives as if they were a  single  archive.  When
       listing the contents of archives, data of files spanning across volumes
       will be collected and only the total printed; when  stamping  archives,
       all volumes will get the date stamp  of  the  latest  file  inside  the
       complete volume set.



  2. Notes

  The program recognizes and displays 64-bit file  sizes  (currently,  in  RAR
archives only). For this reason, it uses 32-bit registers and thus only  works
on 80386 processors and above. However, archive files larger than 2  Gigabytes
are not supported as DOS programs are unable to seek above that limit.

  The program can only recognize archive types based on the extension  of  the
file, therefore it cannot recognize the type of  renamed  and  self-extracting
archives (having the extension ".EXE" or ".COM"). Also, it will try to process
files that are not archives, if their extension advises so, and it may or  may
not lock up during this. It's also possible that it  will  say  invalid  to  a
valid archive. However, all it can mess up is the  output  list  or  the  date
stamp of archives. As it opens files for input only, it does no harm to them.

  Note that multi-volume archives of formats other than ACE, ARJ, CAB and  RAR
are not supported because there is no apparent algorithm  to  find  successive
volumes that belong to the same set.

  WARNING: If you'd like to assemble the source of this program yourself, note
that Turbo Assembler 4.1 (from the Turbo Assembler 5.0 package) may create  an
incorrectly working program, possibly due to some bugs in the  assembler!  Use
Turbo Assembler 3.2 (e.g. from the Borland Pascal 7.0 package) or a  different
assembler instead.



  3. Error messages

  - No archives found
    There are no known archives among the specified files.
  - FILENAME.EXT is not a valid XYZ archive
    Although the extension of the file resembles a  known  archive  type,  the
    data in the file does not follow the archive format.
  - FILENAME.EXT is a damaged XYZ archive
    The file was recognized as a valid archive but later an invalid file entry
    has been found in it.



  4. Copyright and legal issues

  The source of this program is public domain and provided here "as  is"  -  I
don't feel like commenting it but if you have problems then feel free  to  ask
me. If you derive your own program from the source or put a part of the source
into your own program, please, give me a credit and send a copy to me.



  5. The author

  If you're interested in some similarly useful utilities you can  contact  me
at sta@c64.org or visit my homepage at http://sta.c64.org.

  Joe Forster/STA
  17th April, 2008
