Hi! Richard,

On 16 Dec 08 16:31, you wrote to me:

 RW> I receive email as netmail with position and other info for
 RW> one of the cruisers that uses our ham radio network.  HEader and other
 RW> unnecessary information sent to bit bucket, data placed in current.txt
 RW> in a special directory.

Uh huh...

 RW> Next event that processes, current.txt is renamed to
 RW> numerics for month day hour and minute.  I.e. 12151627.txt
 RW> and then your solution works.

(A neat job for the PSIS util, BTW... "PSIS /VMMDDHHNN" sets the
%PSIS% envar, for use later.  Unless you have a similar tool already...)

 RW> We're nuking the entry on line 5 of our dir output, as you
 RW> are.
 RW> Just about a drop-in solution!!!  thanks!!!

Kewl!

 RW> still, if you think of anything I'm missing in this process, bounce it
 RW> off me.

First off, I had in mind that the whole whing could be better served by
using your messagebase and associated (maintnenance/post-ing) utils.  But,
after discarding that idea, I've been looking at an old Fidonet application
called Infomail.  It's a document 'server'.  Kind of like a file request
'bot but instead of, or as well as, file-attaches, it serves up documents
as text in netmail replies.  It might be ideal for dealing directly with
your whatever netmailemail gateway.  I.e., no one directly
accesses your Infomail doo-hickey other than your gateway (software).

 RW> BOy m$ sure shot themselves in the foot with later
 RW> iterations of windows by not allowing the use of environment
 RW> variables.  I couldn't live without them.

Mate, you've just got to try to get a Win9x installation working sometime,
just to have a play with its DOS.  At the risk of repeating myself: it's
the last best DOS MS released. Any later NT-based DOS emulation is crap.

For starters, Win9x's DOS 7.xx will evaluate %envars% on the command-line. 
For lazy batch writers like me, typing (actually, copy/pasting from a batch
file) something like this at the command-line:

LOGECHO $W $D-$N-$Y $h:$m:$s UTIL %0 node %NODE% %MACHINE%
>%SEMA4DIR%\TOSSER0%NODE%.SEM
(Warning: line-wrap.  It's one line.)

And getting an intelligent response is simply 'hog heaven'.  Need I mention
that the command-line length is somewhat increased as well.  :-)  There's a
few minor annoyances but DOS 7.xx is the best.

Cheers,
Paul.

... Smash forehead on keyboard to continue...
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-31012