I think it would be fair to say that probably everyone wants these
dupes gone!
So there are two choices. Organise a group of Yarn Guerrilla Commandos, track
down Chin, hold him in a chair at gun point, at a desk, with a computer,
and a compiler, and yarn source code, set up a round the clock vigil, take
his family hostage, and so on and so forth... you get the idea. It's a good
idea, with lots of potential; but I'll leave it to someone else.
I wrote a REXX script.
It scans folders and reports stats similar to NNIGN does. But it has an
optional switch that will scan for duplicates and mark the oldest of the
duplicates with the black 'D' flag. The script doesn't actually do any
deletion itself. It changes the X-Status: flag so that Yarn will do the
dirty work next time you open and close the folder.
Being a rexx script it's not the fastest thing in the world; but it's not
bad. It takes exponentially longer to find the duplicates the larger your
folder is though. On a 3.5 meg folder with about 900 articles in it (wow,
them MAILED folders sure grow fast! hard to keep on top of them) took 3
minutes and 40 seconds to weed out the 26 duplicates that were located (this
is on my 486dx66). Wheh. Oh well, we are all multitasking, right? Who cares
how long it takes... do it in the background if you have a huge folder. (-:
The script is programmed with OS/2 rexx but should work with PC-DOS 7.0
REXX, if anyone is actually running PC DOS. If anyone out there has another
REXX (like Regina REXX for win95) the script will probably work with one or
two minor adjustments (reading environmental variable is different). Being
a REXX script you can hack away. Maybe someone wants to modify it to scan by
dates and mark articles older than 3 years for deletion. (-; who knows.
It has lots of error checking so hopefully nothing will screw up terribly.
If in any doubt at all it won't do any writing, and report an error. However
remember, to be absolutely safe you may want to backup your folders first
before trying it.
And it has optional progress indicator... whee.
Anyhow... as usual... on my web... on the rexx page.
http://www.io.org/~tm/rexxbells.html
or the top of the what's new page
http://www.io.org/~tm/newbells2.html
--
..,.,.,,..,...,.,.,.,.,.,.,,,,.,.,.,...,.,.,..,.,,.,..,..,.,..,.,,.,.
Tim Muddleton =-with cries among angelic orders-= as544@torfree.net
-=-=- the best sequel: The House on Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne -=-=-
``'`''`'`'''`'```'`'`'`'`''`'``'`'`'`'`'`''`'`'`''```'`'`'`''`''``'`'
Yarn/2 Bells & Whistles Page: http://www.io.org/~tm/bells2.html