RLIB REL LIBRARY MANAGER

RLIB and its companion files are Copyrighted in 1988 by A.E. Hawley
You may use and modify it for your own personal needs but may not
distribute it in modified form and may not distribute it for the
purpose of profit or other monetary gain. If you modify RLIB and
wish to share such modifications, please send them to the author
for coordination and version control.

RLIB manages library files containing REL modules compatible with
those produced by the Microsoft Maccro-80 assembler, and by others
like ZAS and ZMAC. Such files are mrel format files.

The command structure for RLIB is explained in the help screen which
is invoked by typing the program name either alone or with one or
two slashes (/) or question marks (?). All filenames may be provided
on the command line using standard ZCPR filespecs for which all but
the filename is optional.

The functions provided by RLIB are basically three. These three basic
functions are sufficient to build and maintain mrel libraries, as will
be discussed below. The three basic functions are:

	1. Display Names and Entry points for mrel modules
	   in a library.

	2. Delete modules from a library by name.

	3. Add modules to a (possibly empty) library.

Extracting modules

When all modules but one have been deleted from a library, the resulting
file is identical to the original single REL module. This is how one can
extract modules (one at a time) from the library. Naturally, the single
module library would usually be renamed to its module name.

Building a Library

The command "RLIB <libname>=<list of rel files>" causes search for the
file <libname>. If found, the rel modules in the list are appended to
the library in the order they occur in the list. If the library file
is not found, then it is created and the same appending process occurs.

Deleting modules from a Library

A command like "RLIB <lib>=<module list> /d" causes the modules named
to be deleted from the library. The "/d" is an option, and the '/' is
not required as long as there is a delimiting space between the list
and the option character.

Replacing Modules

The same command format is used, but with an option character 'R'.
RLIB first deletes the modules named in the list, then appends those
files with the same name. This is not a 'true' replacement, because
the order of occurrence in the library is not retained.

Rearranging the order of modules in the library

Repetitive deletion and append operations are sufficient to rearrange
the modules in a library. During the append operation, a new module
could be included at any point; this constitutes an insertion.

So you can build, add to, delete, insert, replace, and rearrange the
modules in a library. It is not the purpose of this documentation to
explain WHY one would want to use mrel libraries. Having read this
far, you probably already have some good and sufficient reasons.

		Al Hawley
		Ladera Znode, Los Angeles, Ca
		(213) 670-9465