Background & Feature Introduction

So often, so often we have to key in file or path names in windows or DOS. When we open Notepad or Word and want to open (or save to) a file in another directory or drive. I think most of us prefer to browse for that file, In the meantime, thinking impatiently, "Why do I always have to click sooooo many times for that single file!". "Norton File Assist" in "Norton Navigator" is sure a neat way to solve it. It helps me quite a lot, but sometimes not enough. What's more, some programs, like windiff comes with Ms VC and all DOS programs, do not provide a browse function at all.

Whenever I had to do browsing like that, there was always a voice in my mind, "Why doesn't M$ provides a way that I can grab the file name with full path into clipboard, and let me paste to wherever I want!" The voice became greater and greater and finally it turned into a real product. That's my GrabIt!.

Installation and un-installation

Unzip the files into a temporary directory, surely you have done so. Right click on the file "GrabStd.inf" in Ms Explorer, and choose "install". This will automatically copy all the necessary files to C:\WINTOOLS directory and setup the registry. Currently you have no choice of where to install it, with such a small installation file. But you can move it to anywhere you want by the freeware Coa32 from ZD net. Wait till next version of my BIG installation program please.

You can always un-install it entirely by standard win95's Add-remove software utility. Besides, it won't take up too much disk space. The executable program in only 44K long. So small. Long live small goodies! You can delete the unzipped files afterwards.

Usage

Quite simple. After installation, whenever you want a full-path file (or directory) name, right click on it in Ms Explorer, and choose " Grab Long.f.n". Vala! "Your wish is granted".

You can find 2 menu items when you right click on any file or directory in the MS Explorer: "Grab Long.f.n" and "Grab SHOR~T". The meaning is clear by itself: click on one will get the name of the file or directory, correspondingly in the form of either long or short, copied to windows clipboard.

There is a 3rd menu item when you right click on a file: "Grab Content". When you choose it, the whole content of the file will get copied to windows clipboard. This is extremely useful if you don't have a file viewer that associates itself with all kinds of files. You only need one instance of Windows Notepad and you can view any file's content. It's still convenient if you do have a file viewer associated as that, for those powerful tools always load themselves much slower than GrabIt, and they takes much space too. It is really not worthwhile to start those powerful tools for small file. For big files, I've tried to "grab content" of a 1,257,862 sized file. It took only a second or so to finish. Oh, I can't believe it!

Simple is the best. With my "Grab Content" you don't need to associate many kinds of files with Notepad any more. It can grab file whose size is bigger than Notepad can handle. To view the content, just "Grab Content", switch to Notepad, choose menu "Edit: select all" and then "Edit: paste". If you use my ACE (Alarm Clock for Everyday), Things get more easy. No instance of Notepad any more. ACE's clippad is always within easy reach. No "Edit: select all" and "Edit: paste" any more. Just a single click on "clipboard" is enough. And you'll find its "subjoin" function helpful at times too.

What if the content comes from a program's output, and you don't want bother create and then delete a file? Well, here is GarbIt again, use its stdin-reading ability, like this:

Someprogram some parameters | grabit /s

The /s parameter tells GrabIt to read from standard input: keyboard, pipe or file redirection. I follow the /s parameter from the famous "List" and the list command form 4DOS.

Please note: