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                 Brian Carroll, December 1988.

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This program allows you to remove any or all of: redundant leading
spaces and colons, REMs, and empty lines, in that order. The
stripped program has a line added: '0REM>new-path/file-name' so
the system can refer to it properly (this is not done if you choose
not to change anything). If the old program already had a line 0 you
may find another in the new program, but you can easily re-number it.

You have the option to enter a range of line numbers which will not
be processed at all, whatever the other options set. This is useful
if you want to preserve a group of explanatory lines like these.
You will see these lines flagged '[Skip]' during processing.

The program deals with assembler remarks (introduced by ';' or '\')
but unfortunately detection of entry to and exit from the assembler is
made difficult by the use of '[' and ']' within the assembler syntax;
this slows processing. Lines are flagged '[Assembler]'. The algorithm
will NOT deal correctly with EMBEDDED remarks; it assumes that they
are always at the ends of lines, or on separate ones, like REMs.

The program will not allow you to attempt to compress a directory or
a file whose 'type' is not BASIC, or to save to an existing locked
file. It will warn you of overwriting an existing UNLOCKED file or
if there is no disc in the nominated drive. In each case you can
correct the error.

Note that BASIC lines BEGIN with &D, but here the &D's are used as
line TERMINATORS. The new file is overlayed on top of the original
in the byte array 'filespace', line by line. The original file is
loaded into 'filespace' offset by sufficient space for the title
line (up to one screen line long) to be inserted into the new file.
The % compression and time taken are reported at the end.

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          RISC-OS Version 1.01 by Paul Hobbs 17-Jul-89
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This version multitasks under RISC-OS and provides all of the features
(I think!) of the original Slash program. The use of the program should
be fairly obvious, just drag a BASIC file into the Slash window or onto 
the icon on the icon bar and set the required options. A future version
may be forthcoming in which more compression (by joining lines and 
changing variable names) may appear when I get round to it.

The !Run file is set to give a minimum of 100k and a maximum of 4meg to
the WimpSlot - this is because trying to compact a large file may cause
!Slash to run out of space and hang. Not very elegant I am afraid! To 
avoid this possiblity it attempts to grab all the memory it can find so
install !Slash last if you want to run alarms etc at the same time.

The !RunImage file is a compacted version of BasSource produced by !Slash
itself, so if you want to make any changes edit BasSource and use !Slash
to crunch it down again. 