SORTATR(1)

NAME
sortatr - sort Atari DOS directory in an ATR image

SYNOPSIS

sortatr imagefile.atr

DESCRIPTION

sortatr sorts the directory entries in an Atari DOS 2.0S or MyDOS compatible ATR images. The sort is alphabetical, and the disk image is modified in place.

sortatr does not take any options.

XFD format images are not supported.

WARNINGS

DO NOT USE this utility with DOS 2.5 disk images!

DO NOT USE this utility with MyDOS images containing subdirectories!

DATA LOSS will occur if these warnings are not heeded! The modified directory in the image will not contain any references to DOS 2.5 files using sectors above 720, or to MyDOS subdirectories. This effectively deletes these files from the image.

If in doubt, list the image's directory with atrdir. If you see files marked with a : (colon) or < (less-than), then sortatr should not be used on the image. Even if your purpose is actually to delete these files/dirs, you should use some other utility (or DOS on a real or emulated Atari) to delete them, because sortatr doesn't free the sectors occupied by the files/dirs.

If you ignore these warnings and manage to delete files or directories from your disk image, it should be possible to recover them with a good Atari undelete or disk-repair utility. Although the affected files/dirs have been removed from the disk directory, the data sectors have not been overwritten nor marked as free (meaning they won't be overwritten by later write operations, unlike most "undelete" situations). First, you have to find the starting sector of the missing file/dir and create a directory entry for it in the directory at sectors 36-368. You will probably also have to change the file number in the sector link bytes, or else delete the file in the new directory that's using the file number of the old (deleted) file.

  Further warnings

DO NOT USE this utility with any non-standard (non-AtariDOS, non-MyDOS compatible) disk image.

Boot disks with no directory, SpartaDOS, Atari DOS 3/4, DOS XE, or other non-standard DOS formatted disks might (if you're lucky) just cause an error message. If you're not lucky, they may be corrupted. There is no easy way to recover an image that gets damaged in this way.

DO NOT USE this utility with any image without creating a backup first!

Any image you use with sortatr is modified in-place, and no backup is made by sortatr. Always make a backup copy of an ATR image before you use sortatr on it. You have been warned.

EXIT STATUS

Exit status is zero if the sort was successful, or non-zero if any errors occurred. In case of a non-zero return, the disk image may be truncated, or its directory sectors may be damaged. Hope you had a backup of that image!

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 1997, Ken Siders.

AUTHOR

Ken Siders was the original author of this utility.

Man page and Linux port done by B. Watson <urchlay@slackware.uk>; Urchlay on irc.libera.chat ##atari.

SEE ALSO

atrdir(1), atrextr(1), makeatr(1), sortatr(1).

Any good Atari 8-bit book: De Re Atari, The Atari BASIC Reference Manual, the OS Users' Guide, Mapping the Atari, etc.