DESCRIPTION:
The general syntax of the EXEC command is:
EXEC,<file spec>
where <file spec> is the name of the command file. The default extension is TXT. An example will give some ideas on how EXEC can be used. One set of commands which might be performed quite often is the set to make a new system diskette on drive 1 (see NEWDISK). Normally it is necessary to use NEWDISK and then copy all .CMD and all .SYS files to the new disk. Finally the LINK must be performed. Rather than having to type this set of commands each time it was desired to produce a new system diskette, we could create a command file called MAKEDISK.TXT which contained the necessary commands. The BUILD utility should be used to create this file. The creation of the file might go as follows:
+++BUILD,MAKEDISK
=NEWDISK,1
=COPY,0,1,.CMD,.OV,.LOW,.SYS
=LINK,1.FLEX
=#
+++
The first line of the example tells FLEX we wish to BUILD a file called MAKEDISK (with the default extension of .TXT). Next, the three necessary command lines are typed in just as they would be typed into FLEX. The COPY command will copy all files with CMD, OV, LOW and SYS extensions from drive 0 to drive 1. Finally the LINK will be performed. Now when we want to create a system disk we only need to type the following:
EXEC,MAKEDISK
We are assuming here that MAKEDISK resides on the same disk which contains the system commands. EXEC can also be used to execute the STARTUP file (see STARTUP).
There are many applications for the EXEC command. The one shown is certainly useful but experience and imagination will lead you to other useful applications.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The EXEC utility is loaded into the very upper end of user memory. This is done by first loading EXEC into the utility file space, then calculating the proper starting address so that it will reside right up against the end of the user memory space. Next EXEC is moved into that location and a new end of memory is set to just below EXEC. When the EXEC file is finished, if the user has not further changed the memory end location, EXEC will reset it to the original value.