Ref: 03050018
Title: SPLITBIN:  A Utility to Split Up Large Archive Files
Date:  2/22/91

Copyright 3Com Corporation, 1991.  All rights reserved.

When using utilities such as "PKZIP" to compress and archive applications
and directories, it is easy to generate an archive file several megabytes
in size, making it difficult to store the archive file onto diskette for
backup.  The program SPLITBIN.EXE can simplify this process.  Simply create
your archive file in the usual way, then use SPLITBIN to break up the
archive file into diskette-sized pieces that can then be individually
copied to diskette.

SPLITBIN.EXE and SPLITBIN.C are contained in the Ask3Com Forum, Utilities
library, in the archived file SPLIT.ZIP.

To use SPLITBIN, follow these steps:

1.  Determine the capacity of your diskette in bytes (running CHKDSK A: is a
good way to do this), and save this figure for later reference.

2.  After your archive file has been produced, run SPLITBIN, passing it the
diskette size and archive filename (and, if you choose, an optional parameter
indicating an output drive and path on which to place the split files).  For
example, if your archive file is ARCHIVE.ZIP, and your archive is to be
stored on double-density 5-1/4" (360 KB) floppies, run SPLITBIN with a
command like this:

        SPLITBIN 362496 ARCHIVE.ZIP

SPLITBIN will then generate one or more 362,496-byte output files (depending
on how large the input file is) with the names ARCHIVE.000, ARCHIVE.001,
etc., each of which will fit on your diskettes.

Note:  You can run SPLITBIN without any parameters to produce a help
message.


To combine the split files into a single archive again, so that files
can be extracted from the archive, a JOINBIN utility can be used, if
available, or the DOS COPY command can be used to recombine the files,
like this:

        COPY /B file.000+file.001[+file.002+...] file.ZIP

For example, if splitting up ARCHIVE.ZIP produced three files, the proper
COPY command to recombine them would be

        COPY /B ARCHIVE.000+ARCHIVE.001+ARCHIVE.002 ARCHIVE.ZIP

Be sure to use the /B (binary) switch with COPY, as COPY defaults to ASCII
mode when concatenating.  Otherwise, COPY will terminate after the first
Ctrl-Z in each file.

