Multi-Assign

[Shoonay]

Is the standard WB3.1 command, named [Assign], able to assign many drawers into one? For example:

Assign GAMES: GAMES:A
Assign GAMES: GAMES:B
Assign GAMES: GAMES:C...etc.

BTW: I've just read a book about some other programs, and the author mentiones a AmiNet tool named [AddAssign], that DOES suppose to do that.

[ant512]

Assign GAMES: GAMES:A
Assign GAMES: GAMES:B Add
Assign GAMES: GAMES:C Add

Easy!

[Shoonay]

Nope, not so easy ant512...

This i had figured out some time ago, looking at the original startup, but i get always the message "Can't create assign"... sorry for not mentioning that...

...anyways, that's probably why the AddAssign command was created

[Amigamancer]

Originally Posted by Shoonay

Nope, not so easy ant512...

This i had figured out some time ago, looking at the original startup, but i get always the message "Can't create assign"... sorry for not mentioning that...

...anyways, that's probably why the AddAssign command was created

If what ant512 said, doesn't work for you then you must be doing something wrong.

[ant512]

Oh, wait a minute... First of all, you're trying to assign something to a directory that already exists. That means you have to use the "Add" parameter on every line, like this:

Assign GAMES: GAMES:A Add
Assign GAMES: GAMES:B Add
Assign GAMES: GAMES:C Add

Secondly, and more importantly, you're trying to assign a sub-directory to its own parent. That would cause all manner of recursion problems, and Workbench is probably trying to prevent you from doing something so obviously daft. Consider this hastily mocked-up shell session:

RAM:> cd games:
GAMES:> cd A
GAMES:> cd A
GAMES:> cd A

You can see that GAMES: is a parent of A, but A is assigned to GAMES. Thus A is its own parent. Instant chaos.

[killergorilla]

Yeah that's not a good idea at all. Maybe rename the GAMES folder to ALLGAMES or something then assign each ALLGAMES:A/ etc. to the name GAMES:

Other than that it's gonna hurt surely!

[Marcuz]

there has to be a hierarchy to the subdirectories, right? either that or the system search for files in all. i don't understand where would come from the hurt you KG suggest, but apart of that i can't understand why would assign all the subdirs as Shoonay ask; can you please explain more? thanks

[Shoonay]

Originally Posted by marco pedrana

i can't understand why would assign all the subdirs as Shoonay ask; can you please explain more? thanks

You mean, why am i doing it? Surely i can explain that, no problem

There is my personal project i'm working on in AmigaGuide.
All my already done scripts are made into searching for the game folders in the GAMES drawer.
All my future scripts will probably too .

Assigning an assigned drawer to a main drawer doesn't assign an assignment

[Shoonay]

Yup, everything works now...

Renamed [GAMES:] to [AMIGAMES:]
Created a new [S:Games-Startup] sequence

Assign GAMES: AMIGAMES:A
Assign GAMES: AMIGAMES:B ADD
Assign GAMES: AMIGAMES:C ADD
...and so on...

Thanks all

[killergorilla]

Originally Posted by marco pedrana

there has to be a hierarchy to the subdirectories, right? either that or the system search for files in all. i don't understand where would come from the hurt you KG suggest, but apart of that i can't understand why would assign all the subdirs as Shoonay ask; can you please explain more? thanks

The 'hurt' (ok bad choice of words) is caused by creating assigns to directories that contain subfolders that have already been assigned the same "name".

For example if you chose the name "GAMES" as your assign and you add the directory "GAMES:A" to the assign, then you are creating a never-ending (virtual) folder structure. Because the assign contains a subdir that is in the initial assign. It's just asking for trouble.

[Shoonay]

Originally Posted by killergorilla

It's just asking for trouble.

It's just checking how smart the AmiOS is - 'cous it won't assign creating a warning

[leroq]

... and ASSIGN xxx LATE if you wanna do it perfectly. I find the assign manager thats included in MCP quite useful for that.

[Chuckles]

I'm not real crazy about the idea of assigning a logical device name to more than one physical location myself, though I can see why you'd find it convenient for the OS to be able to find GAMES:MyGame for you easily no matter which one of the directories it was in that you'd mapped to GAMES:.

What if you want to copy MyGame to GAMES: though? Which one of the directories that you have mapped to GAMES should it be copied to? All of them, or only a certain one?

Beyond just that, what if each of the directories you equate with GAMES: contains a different version of MyGame? Isn't it going to be a bit confusing for you to figure out which version you'll actually be running?

I'm with KG on this one ... it's just asking for trouble, and I know the OS isn't going to be smart enough to prevent it from being confusing. Besides, if you're trying to set up an execution path, that's what the "path" command is all about.

[Shoonay]

Originally Posted by Chuckles

What if you want to copy MyGame to GAMES: though? Which one of the directories that you have mapped to GAMES should it be copied to? All of them, or only a certain one?

Donno how the C:Copy command would work, but FileMaster doesn't have ANY trouble with copying from/to those assigned drawers.

Originally Posted by Chuckles

Beyond just that, what if each of the directories you equate with GAMES: contains a different version of MyGame? Isn't it going to be a bit confusing for you to figure out which version you'll actually be running?

It doesn't.
I'm copying EVERY new game into a temporary drawer on a seperate disk, then checking EVERYTHING - file version/date/etc. saves/hiscores and finally overwriting/adding the new game/file/etc.

Originally Posted by Chuckles

I know the OS isn't going to be smart enough to prevent it from being confusing.

Then you either know something i don't or you've been using too much windoze lately

[Chuckles]

Sure sounds like an awful lot of work to do if you're going to eliminate ambiguities that the OS will have to deal with, and the "path" command was designed to solve the problem that it appears you're trying to address. It's not a case of too much "Windoze" exposure affecting that opinion either. Every OS I've encountered over the past 30+ years would have similar difficulties. Faced with an ambiguous choice, any OS must do one of two things: give up (generally with an error message), or make a choice based on some set of defineable rules. I've never heard of a set of rules for assign or any equivalent commands in other OS'es that dealt with disambiguation issues cleanly when using a logical device name as a target. If the problem you are trying to address is mainly one of being able to locate your files for execution (where they are being referenced as a source) though, the rules that path uses are simplicity itself. It still wouldn't address uses such as "copy GAMES:MyGame DF0:", but I'm not sure that the multiple assigns do so either without slowing down the process while multiple directories are searched for "MyGame".

[Bamiga2002]

Originally Posted by Shoonay

I'm copying EVERY new game into a temporary drawer on a seperate disk, then checking EVERYTHING - file version/date/etc. saves/hiscores and finally overwriting/adding the new game/file/etc.

Man, you're being as thorough about these matters than i am . I also check the new files, test the game and then update/copy the game into it's drawer

[Shoonay]

@Chuckles:
Man, i was just jokeing with the "Windoze exposure"

Few posts above, i said that i've changed the main 'Games' partition to [AMIGAMES:] and i'm assigning every drawer on that partition to [GAMES:].
This hasn't coused any problems (YET! ), and probably will not in the future.



@Bamiga2002:
That's the ONLY way to do it, isn't it?

[Bamiga2002]

Damn right it is Shoonay !