InaSphere.com > Programs

Who, me?

I am a software developer and over the years I've written a number of programs for my own use. These are written by a computer geek for other computer geeks. You may freely download them and use them to your hearts content (no warantees expressed or implied, use at your own risk, etc.). You may need knowlege of how to run programs from a command line or how to create a 'shortcut'. Some programs are strictly command line and some have a graphical user interface (GUI).

Prerequisites

These programs are primarily written in Java for the Windows platform (I was just too lazy to make them portable). When I write them I use the latest version of Java available at the time. It is recommended that you have the latest version of Java installed on your machine in order to avoid incompatibility problems.

To download the latest version of Java visit: java.sun.com/javase/downloads. You'll want to download the Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE). You could also use the Java SE Development Kit (JDK) but it is MUCH bigger and unnecessary unless you also plan on doing some of your own Java development. Avoid the "bundle" downloads.

Why 'bin'?

Typically my programs expect to be installed in a directory named "C:\bin". Often this expectation is hard-coded into the software.
  • The name ‘bin’ was borrowed from the conventions used in the UNIX operating system. It is short for ‘binary’ and it is where executable programs are kept.
  • I didn’t want to invest in an installer program. I wanted to keep it simple.
  • I wanted all my programs to be installed in a single directory so that the PATH environment variable only needs to be edited once and the PATH would not need to grow as I added more programs.

Documentation

Typically, the downloadable ZIP file will contain a Word document (e.g. application.doc) that will contain all you need to know. You might want to extract just the documentation first and read the prerequisites and installation instructions. Some programs will display a usage summary on the command line console if launched without any arguments.

Meat and Potatoes

Programs are listed by post date; newest at the top. Keep an eye out for updates.

Program Summary
XmlIndent
2009-08-06
40K
GUI		 The XmlIndent program is used to display XML content in indented format. There is no documentation but usage is pretty straight forward. You can start XmlIndent from the command line specifying a file name or you can cut a paste XML content into the GUI. There is also the ability to find text within a large XML document.
Tail2
2009-08-06
43K
CMD/GUI		 The purpose of the Tail2 utility is to monitor a text file for additional lines of text and to display new lines in a scrolling window in a graphical user interface as they are added. This is a graphical from of the well known UNIX utility called 'tail' with many enhancements such as color highlighting, pausing, and grabbing.
FileGrep2
2009-08-06
290K
CMD/GUI		 The purpose of the FileGrep2 program is to search for lines in files that contain character sequences that match a given regular expression pattern. Once the matches have been found a tree of the matching files and lines containing the matches is presented to the user in graphical form. Non-ASCII files are ignored. Editors may be configured to be launched by right-clicking in the GUI.
FileFind
2009-08-06
44K
CMD		 FileFind is a Windows utility which loosely follows the format of the UNIX ‘find’ command. FileFind allows you to build simple or complex expressions for finding files, and then allows you to perform various actions on those files. Very powerful but not for novices.
FindDups2
2009-08-06
1.0M
GUI		 The purpose of the FindDups2 program is to search one or more directories for files that are exact duplicates. Once the duplicates have been found a list of the duplicate files is presented. Files listed under the same group number are identical. Individual files may be selected and deleted or you can send the duplicate list to a printer or an output file.
DelDups2
2009-08-06
193K
GUI		 The purpose of the DelDups2 program is to search a specified directory for files that are exact duplicates of files in a specified comparison directory. Once the duplicates have been found a tree diagram of the files is presented. The tree may be pruned by removing one or more files and/or directories. Once the tree has been pruned to your satisfaction you can click on the Delete button and the program will permanently remove the duplicate files from your drive.
Javadoc2Words
2009-08-06
8K
CMD		 This is strictly for Java software developers. The purpose of the Javadoc2Words program is to compute a supplemental index of words as extracted from Javadoc documentation stored on your hard drive. The words are determined by breaking down the camel-case class names into their component words. This index is reachable from the 'Overview' Javadoc page which will be modified to insert a 'Words' link at the top. As an example, the word index will contain the word 'Array' which will have links to the class documentation for: Array, ArrayList, CharArrayReader, and SerialArray, amongst others. Notice that the word 'Array' can appear anywhere in the class name.
DirSize
2009-08-06
950K
GUI		 The purpose of the DirSize utility is to compute the disk storage utilized by one or more directories and to display the results in tree format. The computation is done by recursively following the directories and subdirectories, adding up the storage used by any files that they contain. It is useful for mapping disk usage.