Summary: batch jobs in PC?

[Ning Li <lin@cryptic.rch.unimelb.edu.au>]

Dear lister,

Please let me thank Arnold Dekkers for his invaluable help, thank Duncan
Murdoch for his 
documentation in s-archive "Re: [S] RE: Batch Jobs in Windows
98" dated Sun, 16 Jan 2000, 
thank my supervisor John Carlin for working out a final solution together
with me.


There are times when a big job has to be split into small ones, probably
due to memory or 
speed consideration. When these jobs do not require outside intervention
during the running 
process, a way of implementing them is by use of the command BATCH. 
To automatically 
execute a series of batch jobs under Windows can be realized by using DOS
.bat files. 

An Example: Run 2 jobs one after another automatically under Windows.

Suppose Splus is installed in d:\Sp2000, and you want the output go to
d:\mySwS (except when using -attach()-  the results may go somewhere
else).

1) Create a directory to store your source files and .bat file. Say this
directory is d:\Sbatch.

2) Use a text editor to write down the S commands you want to perform in
job 1, and save 
    them as, say, d:\Sbatch\s1.src.  Repeat this for
job 2 and save the commands file as d:\Sbatch\s2.src.

3) Edit a bat file including lines as this:

call "d:Sp2000\cmd\SPLUS.exe" S_PROJ="d:\mySwS"
/BATCH d:\Sbatch\s1.src d:\Sbatch\s1.out d:\Sbatch\s1.err
call "d:Sp2000\cmd\SPLUS.exe" S_PROJ="d:\mySwS"
/BATCH d:\Sbatch\s2.src d:\Sbatch\s2.out d:\Sbatch\s2.err

In each line SPLUS.exe with its full path stays before S_PROJ; the data
directory goes between S_PROJ= 
and /BATCH; after that come in order the source file, the out file and
the error file. The data directory need to 
contain _data and _prefs sub directories. The out file and the err file
don't necessarily exist before your running 
the batch jobs. 

Save the above lines in a file with extension bat in the same directory
as the source files. Say it is save
as d:\Sbatch\s1s2.bat 

4) Close all applications except Windows explore. Go to d:\Sbatch and
double click s1s2.bat. 

This will execute s1.src in background firstly.  Waiting until it
finishes, DOS will then automatically invoke a 
session to do s2.src in background. If you direct the output to a network
drive, you will be able to access the 
part results before the whole job completes.

Best Regards

------------------------------------------------------------------
Ning Li
Research Assistant, CEBU  Univ. of Melbourne