            ͸
             BCOMP - Binary File Compare Utility - Version 1.01 
            

 DISCLAIMER


  This program is offered free of charge and may be included in shareware
  archives without further permission from the author. I will not be held 
  responsible for any dammage that this program inflicts upon you, your 
  friends, family, pets or anyone else you've come into contact with. It 
  is believed to work as described in this file but may not in practice, 
  run it at your own risk!

 INTRODUCTION


  This program was written to aid in the investigation of the structure of
  binary data files. It will compare two files and display the differences
  in hexadecimal and ascii format. Output is sent to STDOUT so that it can
  be redirected to other programs or to a file. Values such as the offset
  in each file to start comparing from and the number of bytes to compare
  can be set on the command line. Speed is not great (6.8 seconds to compare
  two completly different 50k files and write the output to a third file, on 
  a Pentium 100), but it's fine for most things. It's faster with fewer 
  differences. It runs on anything down to an XT and will run in less than 
  2k of RAM.

 SYNTAX


  Command line syntax is as follows:

     BCOMP file1.ext file2.ext [/1=hexvalue] [/2=hexvalue] [/N=hexvalue]

  The switches /1= /2= /N= control the starting offsets for file 1 and 2
  and the number of bytes to compare. The offsets and number of bytes is
  given in hexadecimal, with or without a trailing 'h'. ( A3Fh/A3F )

  To direct the output to a file:

      BCOMP file1.ext file2.ext [switches] > outfile

   To pause between each screen of output:

      BCOMP file1.ext file2.ext [switches] | more

   To print the output on the default printer:

      BCOMP file1.ext file2.ext [switches] > PRN

 OUTPUT

                                   Starting                          Starting
            Name of file 1          Offset    Name of file 2          Offset
 
  OFFSET   FILE1.EXT              00000000  FILE2.EXT              00000000
 
  Current   Hexadecimal            ASCII      Hexadecimal            ASCII
  offset,
  less starting offset

 VERSION INFO


 Version 1.00: thought it worked properly then once I started using it,
               realized that the offsets were really byte numbers, and 
               were annoying to use in hex editors and the like.
 Version 1.01: fixed that offsets thing.

 FEEDBACK


  Let me know what you think of this program! If you find an error please
  include the relavant information about what happened (command line
  paramaters etc.etc..)

  Chris Berkhout <ashtar@cranny.schnet.edu.au>
              or <chris9@cranny.schnet.edu.au>
  Ashtar on TCB BBS

