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How do I make Open Watcom tools less noisy? (Developers)

posted by Doug E-mail, 11.03.2022, 20:19

This might be stating the obvious, but as a last-ditch solution, if you can't minimize text display with a command-line switch or a DOS Environment variable, you might be able to manually hack the text out using a hex/binary editor. (Of course, this makes the changes permanent.)

Search for the "offending" text string, and if it's an ASCII-Z string (ending with ASCII code 0), you can overwrite the string with ASCII zeroes. If it's a DOS string (ending with ASCII code 24h, the $ character), you can overwrite the string with ASCII code 24h. However, sometimes there's a catch: If the LF+CR line terminators (ASCII ODh+0Ah) are displayed by a separate subroutine (i.e., not embedded in the text string itself), there's probably nothing you can easily do to eliminate line feeds, but at least the annoying text will be gone. (Replaced by annoying blank lines!)

If the binary file has been compressed, it must of course be de-compressed before you edit it. You might want to first test that the de-compressed binary will still run -- sometimes programs do a checksum at startup, and won't continue if not correct.

And it goes without saying that one should always work on a copy of the file, as -- in my own experience -- it's easier to make goofs when binary editing.

Good luck!

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