ALL reads an input file, a template, and, optionally, a field definition file and generates output constructed from program or user defined fields, literal text and formatting information supplied by the user as an output template.
The following section names some areas in which these capabilities of ALL can be put to effective use.
On all operating systems that ALL runs on there are some commands that accept wildcard file specifications, but many do not. Some may accept wildcards in one parameter but not in the other (e.g. the REN and RENAME commands on DOS and OpenVMS, respectively).
Usually, however, there will be a directory command that accepts wildcards as well as other options or qualifiers and that can produce a list of the files that match the specified criteria.
No operating system command, however, operates on a list of files. In many cases there is no wildcard specification that expresses your selection criteria sufficiently. In other cases it is impossible to use wildcards altogether.
In these cases you can build a list of all files that you want to process and hand it over to ALL for execution together with the command or commands that you want it to execute on those files.
The command that you pass to ALL for execution resembles a template with fields for the various portions of a file specification and/or text fields encountered in the input text file.
ALL can be used for tasks like the following:
For an example that helps you get started quickly see the next section. For descriptions in greater detail see the corresponding section for each component of the ALL utility.
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