                             ================
                                   DOBOX
                           A Box Score Analyzer
                             ================

WEYMOUTH, MA - April 25, 1992:

 By using box score files downloaded from places like The Complete Sports  BBS 
(see ad below!) or the USA  Today Sports Center BBS,  DOBOX will tally up  all 
the numbers for the players you want to keep an eye on - your rotisserie team, 
possible replacement players, or  just your favorite  baseball team.  You  can 
combine one or more  box score  files and  DOBOX will  total them  all up  and 
produce a report with both batting  and pitching statistics, showing both  the 
team a player played for and the position he played.  

 DOBOX is a very simple program to use.  First, you need to create two  simple 
text files.  Each has a  very simple format: one  name per line, exactly  like 
the name appears in the box score  file.  It does not matter whether the  name 
is in lower, upper, or  mixed case, only  that it match  exactly how the  name 
(possibly including a  first initial or  two) appears in  the box score  file.  
The file BATTERS should contain a list  of all the batters you are  interested 
in keeping track of and the file PITCHERS is used to list all the pitchers you 
want stats on.  Check out the  enclosed sample BATTERS and PITCHERS files  for 
further examples of how to  use it.

 There are only  two special  commands that  can be  found in  the BATTERS  or 
PITCHERS file, the '=' and  '#'.  If  a player's  name is  not unique  between 
leagues and you are using both NL and AL box scores, you'll need to add either 
an "=NL" or "=AL" after  the name to  say which player  you are interested  in 
(see the MCDOWELL entry in the  sample PITCHERS file).  The '#' character,  if 
at the beginning of the line, makes  that line a comment line, which means  it 
will be completely ignored by DOBOX, which will skip to the next ilne.  Again, 
check out the PITCHERS file for an example of both.  

 After creating the two input files with the lists of names, run DOBOX, giving 
it a list of one or more box score  files to use as data files on the  command 
line.  DOBOX looks for the files BATTERS and PITCHERS in the same directory it 
is running from and  reads in  each file  passed to  it.  Then  it displays  a 
complete statistical summary  of your  players, batters  first then  pitchers.  
You can use redirection to put it into a file or print it out on a printer.  

 Here is an example of how to invoke DOBOX:

> dobox al_0424.box c:\bb\al_0422.box >today.box

 This command tells dobox to use two box score files, one found in the current 
directory and one found on the  c: drive in the  \bb directory.  Then it  will 
place the output into a file in the current directory called TODAY.BOX.  

 The list of box score files can be  as long as you want, limited only by  the 
maximum command  line  length  for  DOS,  which  is  usually  128  characters.  
However, you can use DOS wildcards (the '*' and '?' characters) to specify the 
file or files to use.  

 Some special options you can specify on the command line include:

 -b filename : Name of the batters file.  Default is BATTERS.
 -p filename : Name of the pitchers file.  Default is PITCHERS.
 -t ext : Up to three letter extension to find Batters.ext & Pitchers.ext

 You can get  a quick list  of these arguments,  plus version information,  by 
just typing in DOBOX without any arguments.  

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                             REVISION HISTORY

V1.2 - June 6, 1993 - Add Colorado & Florida
                      Handle the stat paragraphs better
		      Add '#' comment character

V1.1 - May 5, 1992 - Fix a few bugs and add NL teams

V1.0 - April 25, 1992 - Initial Release

 ****************************************************************

This program was written by Jonathan Arnold and Mark Mallett.  
Copyright 1991-1992.

It is free to use and distribute, but we retain the rights to it.  Please
include this file with the distribution.

Enclosed files:
  DOBOX.EXE - executable
  README.TXT - this file
  PITCHERS - sample pitchers name file
  BATTERS - sample batters name file
  AL_0424.BOX - Sample AL Box Score File
  NL_0503.BOX - Sample NL Box Score File
  DOBOX.BAT - Sample batch file to run DOBOX 

So, after reading this, try typing:
 dobox al_060?.box

 ****************************************************************

For support and the latest version ... and to get all the latest Box
Scores, check out:


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