From: dawson@willard.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.bbs.waffle
Subject: Re: HISTORY
Date: 2 Sep 92 04:48:01 GMT
Organization: Willard's House BBS, Atlanta, GA -- +1 (404) 664 8814

rat@ruth.UUCP (David Douthitt) writes:

> dawson@willard.UUCP writes:
> 
> | dlhpfm!dlh@NCoast.org (daniel lance herrick) writes:
> 
> | There is one big "gotcha" to using my history program... I tested and debug
> | the program by using only my own STATIC file... and there are some rather
> | simplistic assumptions I made that are not universally applicable.
> 
> | So, I have already been given a static file that my program does not YET wo
> | with.  I will update the software and let the group know when this problem 
> | been resolved.
> 
> So aren't you going to tell the rest of us what the problem is, at least
> so we can avoid creating it in our own programs?  Or is it not that
> kind of a problem?

Sure, I'll tell the rest of you what the problem is.

> I wish you would have spelled it out instead of dancing around naming
> it specifically - if it's a bug I (and others) can avoid, it would be
> helpful to us all to learn from others experiences.

I would have spelled it out, but it was (hopefully) unnecessary.  If you've
run the program, and found a problem, you could have spelled that out to me,
instead of dancing around it.  Or did you not run it yet?

To call the aforementioned "gotcha" a bug is probably inappropriate.  It
would more likely fall into the category of "I didn't write my static file
that way, so why should I support such nonsense?"  So, having been shown
an example static file that broke a couple of assumptions I had made in
the previous code, and which I don't care to share, I notified the net..
"Use that version at your own risk."

The problems referred to have been corrected.  An updated version that will
(hopefully) read the waffle and forums lines, no matter how obfuscated, is on
its way to hogbbs, cowpas, and several other better-connected sites; the new
file is names HISTORY1.ZIP.

Additional points that should be put up front... if you have a large news
spool hierarchy, you will find the the HISTORY.DBF and the three associated
*.NTX files are going to be quite large (at least until expirations are done).
While it will increase the run time, you may safely delete the *.NTX files, as
they will be rebuilt if found to be missing.  (Those files are necessary for
the desired SEEK operations.. as pointed out in a previous posting... it might
be OK for me to offer an option to avoid creating the *.NTX files, but the
database searches would then be QUITE a bit slower.)

I've had the most recent version running on my system for several days.
The DOHIST.BAT file (included in the HISTORY1.ZIP file) gets executed
four times daily, and another (PREBATCH.BAT) file gets run before each
BATCH operation.  I've had ABSOLUTELY no problems.  The program runs
very quickly, and does the desired duplicate file deletion and expires
of old messages.

One sysadmin has tried to execute the program with NO success.  It is
apparently freezing up... and I don't yet know why.  So far, I have no
pointers to where in the code stuff is dying.. I'll be sure to let you
know more as I learn it.

> 
> 
> --
> UUCP: ....!remote.halcyon.com!ruth!rat  |  Network XXIII - +1 608 222 9253
> InterNet: rat@ruth.UUCP                 |  32 Megs of Usenet/Fidonet programs
> ==== Apple II Forever! ====             |  Files available more ways than
>                                         |  any other BBS in America!
> Files via: anon uucp, Fidonet FREQ, mail to archive-server@ruth.uucp, etc.


-- 
dawson@willard.UUCP (Willard Dawson)
Willard's House BBS, Atlanta, GA -- +1 (404) 664 8814