Specifying File & Paths

Throughout PCBSetup, you will be specifying where PCBoard should find filenames and what paths should be used to store files. Because of this, you should have a good knowledge of subdirectories and how they are used by DOS. If you do not, you will most likely have a hard time configuring your PCBoard system to operate the way that you want it to operate.

There are two ways that you can specify a path or filename – absolute and relative. The following sections describe the difference between absolute and relative naming.

You are probably most familiar with this method of specifying a filename. For example, if you tell someone to view C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT, you have given them an absolute filename. In other words, you told them the drive, the subdirectory (in this case the root directory), and the filename. If they view that file they are guaranteed to view one and only one file because you told them exactly where the file is.

To relate this to your PCBoard configuration, you would want to specify absolute filenames when configuring the locations of files that should be shared by all nodes (e.g., user file). That way, you can be assured that the proper filename will be accessed by all nodes.

Specifying a filename in a relative fashion is, for some, a more difficult concept to understand. Relative addressing will take into account the current drive and directory rather than having that information provided via absolute addressing. For example, if you know the file is in the current directory then you could simply reference the filename. You would not need to specify the drive, path, and filename as it would be a waste of time.

Another example would be if you wanted to see a directory of all files in your C:\PCB\GEN\ subdirectory while you are sitting at the C:\PCB> DOS prompt. You could type

DIR C:\PCB\GEN

but it would be even faster to type

DIR GEN

The reason that you can get away with this is because you are already in the C:\PCB\ subdirectory. Why type it in again? Remember that relative addressing takes the current directory into account and adds the relative information to the end of the filename. When you typed DIR GEN you forced DOS to look for a GEN subdirectory underneath the current subdirectory. If you were to change to your DOS subdirectory and then type DIR GEN you would receive an error message that no files were found because you do not have a C:\DOS\GEN subdirectory, but you do have a C:\PCB\GEN subdirectory.

At this point, you have to be asking yourself what good will this relative filename information do for my PCBoard configuration? The answer to that question is “quite a bit” if you are running multiple nodes.

Most likely all of your nodes will point to the same CNAMES file. Inside of the CNAMES file more filenames are specified that relate to each conference on your system. For example, the location of the NEWS file for each conference is located in the CNAMES file. If you wanted every node to have an individual NEWS file then you could change the location of the file to point to NEWS instead of something like C:\PCB\GEN\NEWS Because no path or drive information is specified, PCBoard is going to look in the default directory for a file called NEWS. If that file is found, it will be displayed. What really makes all of this work is the fact that no two nodes will use the same default subdirectory. Therefore, you can have node specific NEWS files by using relative addressing.