From: Gerald Miller 
Subject: Question #2!
Date: 1998/04/18
Message-ID: #1/1
References: 
Distribution: fido
Organization: 4DOS for one and 4DOS for all!
Newsgroups: fido.4dos


Hello Ted,

 \|/  Subject:  Question #2!
 /|\  On Thursday April 16 1998 at 20:45, 
      you wrote to Gerald Miller saying:

 GM>> Yup!  I get an new ASCII Nodelist from my boss and I want to move
 GM>> it to my \NODELIST directory and at the same time, I want to move
 GM>> the old nodelist to my \OLDNODE directory (so there is only one
 GM>> nodelist for that particular Net in the directory at one time).

 GM>> Have you got a solution?

 TM> Although the story seems to be a bit vague, where details are
 TM> concerned, I think I might be able to help.

 TM> First, I expect your boss not to send you an update that's older than

(He tried that, once.  I jumped all over him after I opened the file and read
that it was for "day xxx" instead of "day yyy" [he just changed the date of the
file - young, inexperienced sysop -- figured to fool around by changing the date
of an older copy and tried passing it off for a new version because the correct
one has not come down the line...]!)

 TM> the last one you've already recieved earlier. If this is true, things
 TM> become VERY simple. Second, I assume the file to be named
 TM> NODELIST.???. Any other name may be used, of course, but the *only*
 TM> thing that will change every time, is the extension. The *name* will
 TM> always be the same (if this happens for only ONE zone or net,
 TM> of course).

 TM> If this all is true, the following would work:

 TM> iff exist INBOUND\nodelist.* then
 TM>   move NODELIST\nodelist.* OLDNODE
 TM>   move INBOUND\nodelist.* NODELIST
 TM> endiff

This is VERY similar to what I currently have:

move /q E:\Fd\Nodelist\nodelist.* E:\Fd\Oldnode\
copy /q E:\Fd\Incoming\Pending\nodelist.* E:\Fd\Oldnode\
move /q E:\Fd\Incoming\Pending\nodelist.* E:\Fd\Nodelist\
set flag=newlist

(The "flag" just tells the batch file to do a FORCE compile of all the
nodelists...)

 TM> Of course, you'll have to adjust path- and filenames, for this to
 TM> work. If it *doesn't* work for you at all, please tell me, and we'll
 TM> discuss plan B, and even plan C, if it comes to that ;-))))

What I had in mind, was a method of comparing the dates of
E:\Fd\Nodelist\nodelist.* and E:\Fd\Incoming\Pending\nodelist.*, and then
perfoming the move/copy...

I'm thinking that something along the lines --

    IFF %@ext[E:\Fd\Incoming\Pending\nodelist.*] GT ...
        ...%@ext[E:\Fd\Nodelist\nodelist.*] then
      move /q ...
      ...
    ENDIFF

but I think that @ext is interpreted as a "string" rather than "numeric".

    IFF %@filedate[E:\Fd\Incoming\Pending\nodelist.*] GT ...
        ...%@filedate[E:\Fd\Nodelist\nodelist.*] then
      move /q ...
      ...
    ENDIFF

may have a better chance of working...  Maybe @filedate should be converted to
a three digit number with no separator characters?

              G'Day ... Gerald

... If at first you don't succeed, have Ted Menks do it for you!