PE>> Instead of having a "BBS Software" file section, a
"Stuff David Begley
 PE>> sent me" file section, a "Public Domain" file
section, these are all
 PE>> just attributes on a particular file.  E.g. what if David Begley sends
 PE>> me a public domain file that does BBS related things?  Where do I put
 PE>> it, it belongs in all 3 places! That's because it has all 3
 PE>> attributes.

 RS> True, its easy enough to do. In fact thats close to how a FILES.BBS type
 RS> system works. You have an entry per area for each file in that area. Its
 RS> logically a tiny step to not needing to have the files actually in each
 RS> area an have the entry just have a pointer to where the file actually
 RS> is. Then a file which appears in multiple areas just incurs a new line
 RS> in FILES.BBS.

Well done Rod.  I think you've cracked it, for an easy-to-implement system.
What I do is have a database with the various keywords attached to each
file. Each keyword will have it's own directory, with it's own FILES.BBS.
Since the descriptions will be centrally maintained in the database, I will
just generate the FILES.BBS for each area, not caring about the
descriptions being duplicated, and the files being duplicated (the files
themselves can be hived off into directories that don't have a files.bbs at
all, and don't appear on my files list, they just have pointers to them).

 RS> There aint no decent shareware or PD database. Its one of the software
 RS> areas where there is an absolute dearth of stuff, nothing within a bulls
 RS> roar of the commercial stuff.

Well what have I got that's a mouse's squeak?

 PE>> as it is basically everyone's duty to support the SQL standard.

 RS> I think SQL on PC standalone databases is fucked myself.

Why?  It's the standard way of doing database accesses from within your
program.  BFN.

Paul

--- GoldED/2 2.42.G1114