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Number   :  2454
Date     :  2002-07-11
Author   :  Garry Deane
Subject  :  Re: CD-write sans Direct-CD (& alphabetical order again)
Size(KB) :  3


Unless you need to do this on a regular basis, it would be easy 
enough to simply select the files in explorer which will give you a 
running total of the file size and when you get to near your 700MB 
limit, copy those files to a temporary directory before copying to 
the CD. Just remember where you left off and repeat the process for 
the next CD.

If you want to automate this, I'd suggest using a batch file which 
does something similar. You wouldn't even need Xxcopy (sorry Kan) 
although Xxcopy's list options piped though sort would be useful if 
you need to deal with sub-directories. If you are using NT/W2k/XP 
this is pretty straightforward using native commands. If you are 
using DOS/W95/W98/ME, you'll need a utility program like STRINGS to 
add some batch functionality.

Here's a rough outline of how I'd attack this problem assuming that 
the source directory is a 'flat file' i.e. not taking account of how 
you'd deal with sub-directories.

:: Pseudo code to copy files in sorted order
:: Create a sorted file list
dir /x/-c/o:n/a:-d d:\data\*|find "/" > filelist.txt
:Start
initialise variables
delete temp directory files
:Loop
read line n of filelist.txt and extract the file size and filename 
(3rd and 4th tokens)
add the file size to the total size
if the total size < limit
copy filename to temp directory
else
output the line read from filelist.txt to filelist.new
endif
inc line no
goto :Loop
create CD with files from temp directory
if all well
delete filelist.txt
rename filelist.new filelist.txt
goto :Start
else
abort?
endif

Frankly though, I don't think it's worth the effort. Just figure out 
in advance that (say) all the a*-f* files will fit one CD with some 
room to spare for future files, all the g*-m* files will fit another 
CD etc, then just use repeated xxcopy commands or the /IN parameter. 
It hardly matters that you might end up using a few extra CD's - they 
don't cost much.

Garry

--- In xxcopy@y..., "dontsendjunk2me"  wrote:
> i think i'm back to that 700M partition again, if i want some 
> semblence of sorting to the files. i was thinking of using a scheme 
> like
> 
> > copy a*
> > copy b*
> > copy c*
> > ...
> 
> to get semi-alphabetical order, but that doesn't seem compatible 
with 
> the /Q switches, because the quota would seem to reset after each 
> letter of the alphabet.
> 
> i did the research, and now understand why the "alphabetical-order" 
> feature is not likely to be implemented in xxcopy anytime soon. but 
> what about other ways to copy files in a certain order? pkzipc 
> (command line) lets me input a listfile as the first argument. i'll 
> try that, and see if it copies files in the order of the listfile.
> 
> or, can the source specifier and multiple files in the /in switch 
be 
> parsed in either strict forward or reverse order? 
> 
> example:
> xxcopy a* C:\cdtemp\ /QBL:700M /in b* /in c* ...
> (forgive my probably bad and nonfunctional xxcopy syntax; i haven't 
> really dabbled in this fancy stuff yet.)
> this could theoretically do what i want to do, if it was parsed the 
> way i want it to be. i'll test that now.
> 



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