[<<]Message[>>]    [<<]Author[>>]        Subject            Thread    

Number   :  161
Date     :  2001-06-07
Author   :  Kan Yabumoto
Subject  :  Debugging the Exclusion parameters
Size(KB) :  2



Let me explain a technique which is useful in debugging
the exclusion feature.

From day one, we knew the file/directory exclusion feature
will become a nightmare for some users (even if there were
no bug in XXCOPY). Also, one factor which makes it hard
may be the optimization step we implemented in order to
remove redundant (and unnecessary exclusion) entries
that would be evaluated repeatedly in order to keep the
performance at an acceptable level.

When you start writing a very large set of exclusion items
(XXCOPY does not impose a limit on how many exclusion
items you may add --- as long as the system supplies to
XXCOPY sufficient memory to allocate), you may have twenty,
thirty, or even 100 exclusion items in just one XXCOPY
run. Since XXCOPY currently supports over ten different
kinds of exclusion specifiers (combination of whether or not
descending into subdirectories, wildcard directories,
specifying a file-template or not, etc.), things get
pretty messy. To help you keep organized and develop a
well written batch file script (or just one line of
XXCOPY execution with an external exclusion-specifier file),
XXCOPY provides a debugging feature.

XXCOPY /DEBUG /OX ....

the /DEBUG switch is not limited to the /X switch case.
It will shows you operating parameters and some key switches
and pause at the beginning (you may terminate the command
after examining the parameter by Ctrl-Break or ESC key).

Here, the /OX switch generates a list of exclusion items
(as well as classification of the exclusion item for
the optimization purposes as the result of the initial
parsing). There, when you use a pathname which includes
wildcards, the pathname will be "expanded" into a list of
actual (and existing) pathnames. In this process, when
a pathname entered as an exclusion item which is absent
in the destination will be discarded.

The warning message at the beginning of XXCOPY execution
(as reported in Gabe's message (msg #158) was generated
in this step. In that case, apparently, XXCOPY could not
locate the pathname with a leading tilde character.
(In that case, I can't explain why XXCOPY treated it
as a directory specifier rather than a template for the
filename).

Kan Yabumoto

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