Re: Need reviews of HLA Adventure

Jim Carlock wrote:
>> 08/19/1993 07:50 PM 49,152 MASM.EXE


"Frank Kotler" <fbkotler@xxxxxxxxxxx> posted:
> 1993??? Jeez, I thought *I* was running outdated stuff!
> That's before there *was* a Nasm, or Fasm, or HLA!
>
> HLA produces hlaadv.asm, which includes other files produced
> by hla - hlaadv.bss.inc, hlaadv.consts.inc... and .data. and .extpub.
> and .ro. - and hlaadv.link, which is a "command file" for the linker,
> not included by the .asm file.

<snicker> So what's the current version of MASM? I'm not current?

Thanks, Frank.

> That's intended... wrong as it sounds when you say it that
> way. Does Masm prompt you to overwrite an existing .obj
> file? Or preserve it's date/time? Same idea.

I was thinking some application created the ".hla" file...

Hey it's a text file! <g> Hmmm. Maybe the file format for the files
should include some header information such as for date/time stamps.

.... I was thinking of it as an archive of files like a zipped file, where
the files keep their time and date stamps when packed and unpacked.
I think that should be the way it should be handled. Because in effect,
the .hla file is a container holding files, right? And ALL files have a time
and date stamp on them, right? And when extracting those files to their
actual source code files they should be dated and extracted with proper
date, time, (and version information if appropriate...) Something Randy
might want to consider. After all it is a container containing source "files".
So I'm almost thinking of it along the lines of a resource file now. But I
still don't know what the full capacity of the file fulfills, can it contain icons,
bitmap information? If so, those should have date and time stamps so they
can be extracted properly. Also, if that is the actual file that is used as the
assembly source, it should be able to create the appropriate date/time on
the assembled .exe.

So .hla is a text script currently. Ahh, that makes sense. Still I will argue
that the date and time information should be part of the script. And that's
where all the arguing that it's a script file (and preparser) comes from. :-)

Definitely something useful, rather than having to resort to an external
touch program and a batch file configured to do the job. Script files
can handle that. After all a batch file is a script. <g>

So I see something along the lines of XML to get the job done, it's well
recognized, easy to read, and doesn't add much to the filesize:

<FILES="*.asm;*.inc" />
<DEFAULTDATETIME="12/31/2525 13:14.00" />
<FILE="hlaadv.asm" DateTime="12/31/2525 13:14.01" />
<FILE="hlaadv.exe" DateTime="12/25/3535 00:00.00" />

I did catch the newer link to Paul's site... where version 3.0 is available.
http://members.tripod.com/~panks/hlaadv.html

I also think that the other issue about overwriting a file warning would
be a nice issue to resolve. So I'm going to keep these items in place
as requests. I've pretty much repeated myself too much already. A
script file and pre-parser should be able to handle that as well. Hope
this is useful. ;-)

>> That introduces two problems in particular.
>> 1) It overwrites an existing file without prompting.
>> 2) It does not keep the original date/time of the file it's creating
>> and instead creates confusion by using the current system date
>> and time.

Thanks Randy. Double-thanks Frank. It's amazing what you can
you learn when you start looking at things.

So if anyone's interested...
1) I started off not knowing what an .hla file was and tried assembling
hlaadv.asm.
2) Upon Frank's first explanation of the .hla file, I started to think of
it as a .zipped archive of files.
3) Upon Frank's last response, I decided it's time to take a look at
what was actually inside the .hla file. Even after taking a quick look I
still thought it's a container of files.
4) So in preparing this response to Frank, I finally decided to read the
code inside of the hlaadv.hla file and search for the file names it creates.
Those filenames didn't exist. And I kept seeing C like statements inside
of it. And that's when it clicked that it was a script.
5) In reality it is a script to create files. And the files it creates should
have a way to set the date/time on the files it creates. After all it's a
script to build files. And if the purpose is to build files, the date and
time is an important part of the file. Furthermore, overwriting existing
files should be a consideration.

Valid argumentation ?

Hope that helps. Took a couple days for me to get things straight.

--
Jim Carlock
Please post replies to newsgroup.


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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Need reviews of HLA Adventure
    ... >> So .hla is a text script currently. ... file that shouldn't have been there *until* he'd run HLA. ... HLA should have run the assembler automatically. ... Jim was good enough to ...
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  • Re: Need reviews of HLA Adventure
    ... > And that's when it clicked that it was a script. ... having to edit the XML - several places - every time you ... if HLA promped me to overwrite existing .asm and .inc ...
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