Topics:

Overview
Copyright
Supported Platforms
Unzipping

Overview:

The VB Socket Communications Library is a collection of C++ classes used to build portable TCP/IP and RS232 data communication applications as part of the VBD or independently.

VB Socket Library Features:

• WIN32/UNIX Interoperability
• Object-Oriented Design
• Stream sockets
• Datagram Socket
• RS232 communication components
• Device caching
• Built-in network database components
• Variable block real-time TCP/UDP streaming
• Variable block RS232 streaming
• HTTP client services
• HTML parser
• URL parser
• System time functions
• Logging functions
• File/Directory functions

Several example programs with makefiles for BCC32, MSVC, HPUX C++, and the GNU C++ compiler are provided to demonstrate each of the concepts presented. Release 1034 has been built and tested under Windows 95/98, HPUX 10.20, HPUX11, and RedHat Linux 5.2. All the documentation for the distribution is provided in an HTML format. The documentation covers the vbSocketC++ class library and the example programs provided with this distribution. Parts of the documentation may be made available in other formats upon request.

Copyright and Warranty Information:

The VBD and VBS C++ classes are copyright (c) 1997 and 2000 by Douglas M. Gaer. All those who put this code or its derivatives in a commercial product MUST mention this copyright in their documentation for users of the products in which this code or its derivative classes are used. Otherwise, you have the freedom to redistribute verbatim copies of this source code, adapt it to your specific needs, or improve the code and release your improvements to the public provided that the modified files carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

Supported Platforms:

The vbSocket C++ class library and the example programs have been compiled and tested using the following platforms:

Windows 95/98 - using MSVC version 4.2
Windows 98 - using Borland C++ 5.5 for Win32
HPUX 10.20 - using HP CPP version 10.24
HPUX 11.0 - Using HP aC++ B3910B A.03.10
RedHat Linux 5.2 - using GNU g++ version egcs-2.90.29

Five different makefiles are provided in the source code directories to build the library examples and example programs:

msvc40.mak - for Microsoft Visual C/C++
bcc32 - for the Borland compiler
pux10.mak - for the HPUX C++ compiler
hpux11.mak - for the HPUX C++ compiler
gnu_gcc.mak - for the GNU C/C++ compiler

Unzipping The Distribution:

The entire distribution requires approximately 5 MB of free disk space to unzip. Two distributions are available, one for

Windows 95/98 and one for UNIX.

Windows 95:

To unzip this distribution you will need a copy of PKZIP version 2.03 for DOS or WINZIP version 6.1 or higher for Windows 95. To unzip using PKZIP 2.03 follow these instructions:

C:\>mkdir vbsocket
C:\>copy vbs1034.zip c:\vbsocket
C:\>cd vbsocket
C:\vbsocket>pkunzip -d vbs1034.zip

UNIX:

To unzip this distribution you need a copy GZIP/GUNZIP version 1.2.4 or higher. To unzip using GZIP and the UNIX tar utility follow these instructions:

% gzip -d vbs1034.tgz
% tar xvf vbs1034.tar

To unzip using GUNZIP and the UNIX tar utility follow these instructions:

% gunzip vbs1034.tgz
% tar xvf vbs1034.tar

NOTE: You can use UNZIP for UNIX version 5.12 to unzip the Windows 95/98 distribution:

% mkdir vbsocket
% cp vbs1034.zip vbsocket\vbs1034.zip
% cd vbsocket

% unzip -a -L vbs1034.zip

The unzip "-a" option will auto-convert any text files and the

"-L" option will make the directory and file names all lower case.