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PIP tutorial by Dale Ray (D.RAY1)

PIP: Peripheral Interchange Program

PIP is one of the most powerful utilities in your CP/M library. 
Normally you use it to simply copy files from one drive to 
another. But PIP can do much more than that. PIP can interchange 
data between your other computer peripherals too. In CP/M each 
peripheral has a name that the computer recognizes it by. For 
example:

LST = PRINTER

CON = CONSOLE (monitor & keyboard)

These devices can be specified in the PIP command instead of a 
disk drive.

EXAMPLE:

A>PIP LST:=A:FILE.TYP

The above command will cause FILE.TYP to be read from the disk in 
drive A and outputted to the printer. If you had specified CON: 
instead it would be printed on your monitor.

OPTIONS:

PIP has many options for altering a file as it is transferred 
between peripherals. These can be used to reformat a file as it 
is duplicated or printed. You will use these options most 
frequently with text files. The options are used by placing them 
in brackets [] at the end of the command string. DO NOT put a 
space before the first bracket. Where there is an [n] after the 
option it means that you can enter a number there to further 
control the options function.

Dn ... Delete Characters. This will truncate a file that is too 
wide to display. All characters that are beyond (n) will be cut 
off.

E .... Echo Characters. all copying is echoed to the screen. Use 
this to view a file while it is being transferred.

F .... Form Feeds removed. Takes all form feed commands out of 
the file.

L .... Lowercase Only. Converts all uppercase characters to 
lowercase.

N .... Number Lines. Numbers the lines of the file. Used most to 
create a program file from a text file, allowing you to enter 
your program with a text editor.

N2 ... Number Lines. Same as above but it puts leading zeros 
before the numbers (001) and a tab after the number.

Pn ... Page Form-Feeds added. Think of this as page length. It 
adds a form feed after the number of lines you specify. Default 
is 60. Keeps you from printing over the perfs.

Qphrase[control]Z... Quit copying at phrase specified. After the 
Q enter the phrase you want the computer to look for then hold 
down the control key and press Z. When your phrase is reached 
copying will be stopped.

Sphrase[control]Z... Start copying at phrase specified. Same 
syntax as above. Use Q and S together to copy a specified section 
of the file.

Tn ... Tab Spaces. Each TAB encountered in the text will cause 
the specified number of spaces to be printed.

U .... Uppercase only. Converts all lowercase to uppercase 
characters.

V ... Verify copy. Causes the system to check the copy against 
the original for errors.

As you can see there is a lot you can do with PIP to reformat 
text files. Experiment to see what you can do.

OTHER USES:

Another use for PIP in handling text files is the ability to join 
files together. To do this simply list the source files separated 
by a comma. EX.: 

A>PIP BOOK=CHAPTER1,CHAPTER2,CHAPTER3

This would create a file called book by copying the three 
specified source files into one larger file.

You can also use PIP to transfer files from one user area to 
another. The syntax looks like this: 

A>PIP NEWFILE.TYP=OLDFILE.TYP[Gn] 

This would GET the file OLDFILE.TYP from the user area specified 
by the n and copy it to the current user area.
TYP[Gn] 

This would GET the file OLDFILE.TYP from the user area specified 
by the n and copy it to the cur