BL> Why not just use the zero-length as the key?
PE> Tell me which line to change...

PE> c:
PE> cd\specialr
PE> delzero *.*
PE> cd\downsort
PE> downsort
PE> ren down_all.a~s F711X934.TXT

BL> add this...   nullzero F711X934.TXT

Operating on the resultant file list, instead of the place where it is
really defined.

PE> zip -9km f711x934 f711x934.txt
PE> copy f711x934.zip c:\minpoint
PE> del f711x934.zip
PE> cd filesbbs
PE> grep -v "DELETE THIS FILE" files.20 >temp.txt
PE> copy temp.txt \specialr\files.bbs
PE> cd ..
PE> echo y | del filesbbs

BL> Seeing you're such a lousy programmer, I've written you a little 
BL> Pascal utility to remove the lines with "-- archived --" from your 
BL> FILES list. Just put nullzero.exe in the same directory as 
BL> f711x934.txt and add the extra line to your BAT file.

BL> Failing that, I'd be inclined to replace the line with "DELETE THIS
BL> FILE" with...

BL> grep -v "-- archived --" files.20 >temp.txt         

Actually, that's exactly what I put in first off.  Then it trashed my
files.20, replacing it with "this is how to use grep", because it
treated the "--" as options to grep!  So then I put in
"\-\-", which was fine, except it turned out that in files.20,
there was no "-- archived --" in it!!!  All it has is the raw
files.bbs, which is FILENAME DESCRIPTION.

So I hunted around to see if it was possible to get downsort to
automatically delete non-existant files, but couldn't find any option to do
so.  The next thing would be to "dir" of my SPECIALR and compare
to FILES.20 and delete anything in FILES.20 that didn't exist in the
directory listing.  At that point I decided to go with a "DELETE THIS
FILE" description as the easiest option for me.

BL> It seems that whatever you use to generate your FILES list puts this
BL> "-- archived --" marker in the line anyway.

BL> In the meantime I've modified my TMLTIC utility to add the magic words 
BL> in case you find a BAT file too complicated and accidentally format 
BL> drive C: when you try to uudecode the utility. I've included the Pascal 
BL> source to annoy you. Pascal is really easy, and fast, too.

BL> Of course, you will tell me it isn't really Pascal, but neither is 
BL> your fucking BAT file.

It's a CMD file, and it's executing OS/2 programs.  To execute DOS programs
it would create a DOS session and run the program.  I don't want to run DOS
programs in my BBS.  My whole BBS is setup with purely OS/2 programs. 
Also, I want it to fix up the files.20.  The solution I have, although
annoying, does actually cover both of those technical requirements.  If you
were to write a C program to do that, it would cover both technical
requirements too.  Actually, I can do the "DIR" in my cmd file,
so you only need to open two text files, and either create a 3rd output
file containing commands, or call system().  BFN.  Paul.
@EOT:

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