BL> have you got any ideas on how I can do a check on the overall operation?

BL> Your pkt2qwk compares the size of the PKT to the QWK, and I rather
BL> like that. I could check the ratio, and if I lose 10% (say), I
BL> could add a warning and not erase anything until the user says so.

Trouble with the way its done now is that it assumes that the combined
PKT really is the total of the PKT mail which was in the archived PKTs.
There is no guarantee that it is.

If you are going to do that sort of check it would be much better to
look at the saved archived PKTs with an archiver etc to get the total
size of the PKTs in there from the directory info in the archive and
compare that with the resulting QWK.

Trouble with the size comparison tho is that it cant hope to pick
up more than gross problems, wont catch say a single message lost
for some problem with the message boundary detection etc.

BL> I save the day's packets anyway, in case they get mangled.

Yeah, thats absolutely essential.

BL> Rod was talking about counting messages in and out, but there's not
BL> much point in that because they *have* to be the same; the way it works.

Nope, you missed my point. You want a completely separate standalone
ute which counts the messages in the PKTs, ideally with a completely
separate algorithm too. Then the comparison of what it counts with
what your PKT2QWK converter counts in the QWK produced really is useful.

The counting ute isnt hard, pretty trivial compared to the converter.

--- PQWK202