At some time or another most disc users will have had to indulge in a little 'housekeeping', by which I mean tidying up the disc, deleting old unwanted files and copying all files relevant to a particular activity, onto a separate disc. This is probably one of the most tiresome chores in computing. Pulser Software have come up with Copycat. Written in Basic, this simple little program will be invaluable to disc users.

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Copycat is a program that uses a single choice method to either Kill, Copy, Protector List the protection on any or all the files on a disc. The only menu the program presents is the one that asks which of the afore mentioned tasks you wish to perform. Once that choice is made then all others require yes or no answers only. Each of the main procedures allows you to manipulate all the files or just individual files, and as the system works its way through the directory it always offers the facility to abort or treat all the remaining files. At any of these points typing 'Y' would treat only the file whose name is displayed.

The search facility is a little disappointing in that it does not repeat. Granted, it does search out a file even if the whole filename is not entered (opyc will normally find copycat). However, the system seems to think that it is infallible and automatically assumes that the first match it finds is the one that you want. In addition to this a repeating search facility would make it much easier to copy all the text flies by entering .TXT when in search mode.

A small source of annoyance is the way Copycat deals with empty directories. If a clean disc is put in, and it is attempted to copy a file from it then an error occurs. The same thing happens at the end of the Kill routine. When the program attempts to display the directory for the disc, and finds it empty. Although this is not a serious fault, it would have been much nicer to display a message saying that the directory is empty.

The enhanced directory facility is really super. Output can be channeled to either screen or printer and not only lists the file names, but also their position on the disc and the start, finish and exec addresses to boot. The printer output is very neatly laid out, with a space between each file and the file name printed in bold type. The latter could present problems for some users, as no information is supplied as to how to reconfigure the program for a different printer. It works well on my Amstrad, which is Epson fx compatible, but if your printer uses a different code for bold type then it could cause a problem. As the program is written in Basic, a simple remedy presents itself, Pulser need only print the number of the lines containing the printer codes so that the user could simply change the codes and reconfigure the program.

All these criticisms are of a fairly minor nature and, when the price of the program is taken into account, fade into insignificance. A more serious problem is that the copy routine is geared to a two drive system and cannot make a copy of a program using a single drive. All the other facilities will work equally well on one or two drive systems. My advice to any disc user is to get yourself a copy of this program and use it to make copies of itself on all your discs. Once you have used Copycat, you will wonder how you ever got by without it.