PDT directly competes with my DFD product. But that's okay because, frankly, I
save more $$$ using PDT (in time and effort) than I make from DFD. That says a lot!
Overview
PDT is an extremely flexible tool to view and edit any file
– data files, EXE or COM files, font files, EBCDIC files, files on networked drives,
floppy drives or hard disks. Using PDT I've edited tiny 1-byte files, as well as huge,
970-megabyte files residing on networked file servers. PDT can edit files up to 2
gigabytes in size – up to 4 at once! (Note: PDT-Windows
lets you edit files with over 18 quintillion
bytes, up to 10 at once!)
Very simply, PDT is a wonder to behold! Its features, power and speed are
unparalleled. In fact, the adrenaline flows when you watch PDT safely and quickly change
thousands, millions or billions of bytes of data!
PDT's speed is nothing less than phenomenal. Working on a network, I edited the
first bytes in a 970 megabyte file, then jumped to the end of the file and changed the
last byte. The total elapsed time was 15 seconds – on a networked drive!
Ease of Use; Getting Help
Editing files is much like working in a word processor. Move around files using
cursor pad keys. And if you're working in dBase or other formatted data files, you can
move from field to field to quickly view or edit fields.
PDT offers fast keyboard hotkeys, on-line help, and, of course, easy-to-use menus.
File Editing
PDT's data file editing tools are unmatched in any program.
For example, if you open a dBase ".DBF" file, PDT automatically formats
your view of the data into logical rows and columns.
Many programs can do that. But PDT is unique not only in the long list of other
features it offers, but also in letting you use this same intelligence with virtually ANY
fixed-format data file, like those created by most programming languages.
PDT can remember the field-by-field layout of your data files, and will then
display that data in logical rows and columns – automatically, whenever you open the
file. Equally important, once you tell PDT a field's "type," it can display the
"values" in that field – for character, integer, floating point, binary,
BCD, column binary and on and on and ....
You can even move the cursor to, say, a floating point field and press a key to
edit its value in normal decimal form. When you press <Enter>, PDT saves what you
entered in the proper format. Slick! Easy! Fast!
With PDT you can define file structures, then every time you open files,
their information is laid out in logical rows and columns. And once PDT knows the
format (or structure) of your data:
You can move from field-to-field to easily view or edit fields.
As you move to each field, PDT displays the VALUE of that field – even fields
stored in "packed numeric" formats.
You can easily edit fields, even "packed numeric" fields. PDT
automatically converts "packed" numbers to their decimal equivalent, lets you
edit them and then re-converts edited values back to the proper format before saving them
to disk.
Examples
We mentioned above some of the types of things we'd use PDT for. Here are a
few more examples of how PDT has saved us enormous amounts of time, and enabled us to do
things we thought were impossible or very difficult:
We created a new data file to store incoming data. After the data was merged, we
found several fields were much wider than necessary. I just moved to the fields, told PDT
to shrink them, and in seconds it was done – across thousands of records, saving
millions of bytes of disk space.
I needed to copy several hundred records to a new file. Using PDT's Block Mark and
Block Export features it took just seconds!
We download a huge file from the mainframe. But we soon discovered it had been
damaged in transit. I opened it in PDT, set the record length, and within seconds had
found the damaged area. It took just 2 minutes to restore damaged data and we were on our
way – without writing a single line of code.
We had to merge data from one file into the MIDDLE of another. I opened both files
in PDT (you can open several files at once), marked a block to copy, jumped to the other
window and selected "Copy/Insert." PDT merged the data instantly.
We were handed a data file and asked to analyze it. But nobody knew its file
structure! I opened it in PDT, made a guess as to the record length, then leaned on the F9
and F10 keys. When you press F9 or F10 (F8 and F9 in PDT-Windows),
PDT adjusts the record length up or down, and re-draws the screen to adjust it's
"view" of the data. Like a giant pendulum, the data literally swings into the
proper view. Once we figured out the record length, it was easy to identify where each
field began, and what type of field it was (i.e., character, integer, double, currency,
etc.). For each field, we pressed a key and told PDT what the field name and field type
were. When we were done, PDT saved a "structure file" to disk. This structure
file gave us everything we needed to create the "structure" or "type"
our programs needed to read the data. And whenever we opened the file again in PDT, PDT
read the structure file and automatically formatted the data into rows and columns.
List of Features
The examples above just scratch the surface of what you can do with PDT. Here's a
summary of some of the many other options PDT offers.
Block Options
"Blocks" can be records, columns or a continuous stream. Once you mark a
block you can Delete it, Export it, Fill it (with any ASCII character or phrase), Copy it
(to another location in the same file, or to another file). You can even mark a column and
Add it up, or add Sequence Numbers to it (like unique record or customer numbers).
Search & Replace
You may Search or Search & Replace, anywhere in the file, or in just the block
or column you've marked. You can ignore Upper and Lower case, and you can Search &
Replace using any ASCII character: 0 through 255.
EBCDIC File Support
One of PDT's most unique features is how easily it handles EBCDIC files, like
those you'd download from mainframe computers. You can leave EBCDIC files on disk as-is,
and tell PDT to dynamically translate them on-the-fly into ASCII. This lets you view and
edit data in easy-to-understand ASCII format. Anything you change is automatically
converted back to EBCDIC, and then saved to disk.
File Management
PDT lets you create files or directories, and change the attributes of files (Read
Only, Hidden, System) so you can edit them. A powerful "File Combine" option
lets you combine files, using the smallest amount of disk space possible.
Flies in the Ointment
In short, PDT lets you view and edit virtually any type of file, up to 2 gigabytes
in size. And since you can open 4 file windows, you can work with up to 8 gigabytes of
data at once! (Note: PDT-Windows lets you edit files with
quintillions of bytes, up to 10 files at once!)
But PDT isn't perfect. My main complaint is that I didn't write it...
Okay, I said it.
To understand another PDT limitation, you have to know a little about how PDT
handles file editing. Unlike a word processor or editor which loads files into memory, PDT
loads nothing into memory. When PDT opens a file, you'll be looking at what's on
disk (and PDT displays files-on-disk with astonishing speed). Using this approach, PDT can
help you edit huge files with no need for extra memory.
But turn edit mode on and change something, and that change is immediately written
to disk (Note: In PDT-Windows, cell editing is buffered
for safety). That's why edit mode is OFF by default. (Note: The latest versions of PDT
(DOS) include an "Edit Field" option – which is buffered. That means you
can press a function key, see the "value" of the field you want to edit, edit
it, and press <Enter> to accept your changes, or <Escape> to cancel editing.)
The fact that changes are immediately saved to disk accounts for PDT's restriction
that when you Replace something, you must replace it with something else of the same
length. A word processor's search and replace function can expand or contract things in
memory. But if PDT replaced something with something else of a different width, every time
it found a "match" PDT would have to re-write the entire disk file from that
point all the way to the end. As you can imagine, with large files, this would be
time-consuming and could be risky. And if you're editing EXE or COM files, you should
never change the length of a variable. So this limitation has some justification.
Summary
If you create or use data files, if you're a programmer, or if you must maintain
or repair data files, do yourself a favor and grab a copy of PDT! You'll be amazed at it's
flexibility, speed and awesome power.
I wouldn't care how much it costs (which isn't much); I save that much every week
I use it. Pick up the phone and order a copy – now!
