List 9.6e is a dos file viewer/manager. It’s a stunning piece of software: small, simple, extraordinarily intuitive, and extremely versatile. List can copy, delete, edit (with the editor of your choice), move, rename, change attributes, sort files and directories (for viewing) by date, size, or extension in regular or reverse order; you can specify filemasks (e.g., view only *.txt files), and switch directories or view the contents of any file by merely pressing the enter key; while your viewing a file’s contents there’s also a find function. And you can change background and text colors. You can set the number of columns per page (up to six or nine depending on the display mode); with three columns, there are 69 entries per page and listings include file name, date, and size; with two columns, the time stamp is added; with one column, attributes and long file names are also displayed. I’ve described this as “the best shareware program extant,” and it may be the best example of great software programming ever. It comes with an 80 page manual on disk, not because it’s complicated, but because it’s sophisticated, and you can start using List immediately, without the manual. I configured my WinME MSDOS icon to go directly to List. When you go to DOS, you normally see just C:\> (which I’ve described as “going into a coal mine with only a match and no map”). With List you see all the files and directories that are in the current directory. If you ever go to DOS, even only occasionally, I can’t recommend this highly enough. You can download the full version from [Vern(on) D.] Buerg Software, http://www.buerg.com/main.html; if you like it, you should register it: $20 online, $37 by mail w/disk, including a configuration utility, and a printed manual.
