11 utilities take command

Software author Frank Westlake has written a plethora of Windows NT/2000 command-line tools, rescued from possible obscurity by Ted Davis and placed online at Davis's website: http://gearbox.maem.umr.edu/batch/f_w_util/.

Many of them are functions I haven't seen provided by other utilities anywhere else, and for that reason they're worthy of note. Administrators who need quick-and-dirty ways to do certain little things will no doubt enjoy what they find here. (The utilities do not come with source code, unfortunately.)

The tools include the following:

• AttribNT: Sets file attributes including compression, offline and temporary file attributes.

• FI: FileInfo displays names, links, file stream and security information as well as device and filter information for a given volume.

• WaitDirChg: Waits for a change within a given directory tree and then reports that change. This is handy for creating a poor man's "watched directory" function.

• TimeMath: Does math functions on time and date values. (This utility was not completed but is still functional.)

• WriteMailSlot/WritePipe: Sends messages to a mail slot or a named pipe, and includes a utility for reading from same.

• SysMetr: Prints the specified system metric to a file or the console; use sysmetr /l for a full list of available metrics to query.

• Connect: Attempts a TCP/IP connection to a given port (default is port 80), and provides various error levels depending on the results.

• Recycle: Deletes files by moving them to the Recycle Bin rather than performing a hard delete.

• Event: Waits for or signals an event for inter-process communication as a way of performing a controllable pause within a batch script.

• Tee: Redirects STDIN or STDOUT to or from a file; supports both appending and overwriting.

• DNSLU: Performs a DNS lookup by name or IP. (This cannot be used to perform DNS lookups against a custom-specified DNS server, however, which limits its usefulness for things like open-relay blacklists.)