In one of those bouts of boredom when I can do little except wait for a near interminable job to finish I decided to do something other than watch a job sit there on a still screen with PRINTO;WAIT.



I wrote a little command to generate a reverse waterfall display with random characters like The Matrix.  With some derision I didn't take the time to make the characters follow each other downhill until blanked out.  But it still looks like the computer is busy.  All I cared was whether the job finished, not even worried if it was successful, just done:



I enter the command with the parameter of a desired job in quotes, with a default to my full backup.  The next parameter is the screen width which defaults to 78 characters.  The third parameter is the number of jobs with the same name and defaults to 1.



Thus XEQ STILLUP.COMMAND.SYS "MYJOB,MANAGER.SYS" 130 works for a 132 wide screen.



Or XEQ STILLUP.COMMAND.SYS "JINETD,MANAGER.SYS" 78 would go on forever.



USER DEFINED COMMAND FILE:  STILLUP.COMMAND.SYS



PARM MYJOB="BACKFULL,MANAGER.SYS" LEN=78 NUMJOBS=1

IF BOUND(DISPLAY)

  DELETEVAR DISPLAY

ENDIF

IF BOUND(DISPLAYO)

  DELETEVAR DISPLAYO

ENDIF

ECHO START

ECHO !MYJOB is still running.

SETVAR R RANDOM(122) + 1

WHILE JSCOUNT("!MYJOB") = !NUMJOBS

   IF R<45 OR R=60 OR R=62 OR R<32 OR R>122

      SETVAR R 32

   ENDIF

   SETVAR DISPLAY CHR(!R)

   SETVAR DISPLAYO CHR(!R)

   REPEAT

      SETVAR R RANDOM(122) + 1

      IF R<45 OR R=60 OR R=62 OR R<32 OR R>122

         SETVAR R 32

      ENDIF

      SETVAR DISPLAY DISPLAY + CHR(!R)

   FORNUM K=1,!LEN

   ECHO !DISPLAY

   SETVAR DISPLAYO "!DISPLAY"

   DELETEVAR DISPLAY

ENDWHILE

ECHO ***************************************************************

ECHO *                                                             *

ECHO *                        SUCCESS!                             *

ECHO *                                                             *

ECHO *     OTHERWISE THE SCROLLING WOULD HAVE SIMPLY STOPPED       *

ECHO *                                                             *

ECHO ***************************************************************





Tracy Johnson

Business Analyst

Measurement Specialties, Inc.

Office (757) 766-4318

Cell (757) 755-6470

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