CatQWK 2.20 by Patrick Y. Lee February 9, 1992 Copyright 1991-1992 New in version 2.20: 2.2 09 Feb 1992 Second public release - Added routine to make the PERSONAL.NDX file (be sure to add the line PERSONAL=Your Name in your CatQWK.CFG file) - Fixed index file routine to work properly for conferences > 999 and > 9999 - Remove line that extracts *.PTR and *.PNT file because some archiver (LHA to be specific) does not generate the correct ERRORLEVEL return code upon this kind of error condition CatQWK is distributed as-is. You are using this program at your own discretion. The author assumes no responsibilities for damages either from the direct use of this product or as a result of the use of this product. Warranty of any kind is neither implied nor expressed here. This product is the copyrighted work of the author, with portions copy- righted by Borland International. You may use this program under any kind of environment so you choose. There is no monetary charge for this program. CatQWK - Concatenate QWK files - `Cat' is borrowed from the Unix (tm) command `cat'. This program will combine two or more QWK files from the same BBS together into one. This allows you to follow threads easily. I wrote this program originally because when I am behind in reading, and have half a dozen QWKs for each BBS around, reading messages in subject order is crucial so I won't waste time replying to messages others have answered already. Syntax: catqwk [-dpath] newname oldqwk1 [oldqwk2 oldqwk3 ...] [-dpath] This parameter is optional. It allows you to overwrite the work path specified in the configuration file (see below). This program requires two work directories to be used. The directories will be created below the work path. newname This is the name of the new, concatenated, QWK file. Obviously, you must include this to run the program. If no file extension is entered, it will be assumed to be QWK. oldqwk? This is the separate QWK files you want to combine together to make a bigger one. You may either list each individual file by its name, or use standard DOS wildcard to specify them. Anyone wildcards found will be expanded to the full name of the files before running. CatQWK does not check to see if the QWKs are from the same BBS. That is your job! The default compression and decompression program used is PKZIP from PKWare. The default work directories are created in the current directory. You may change these defaults by creating a file named CATQWK.CFG. When an error occurs, the contents of the work directories will be left as-is. The files in there are not deleted. You will have to delete the files manually and remove the directories when an error occurs. CatQWK will not run if the work directories (!!!work.new and !!!work.old) already exist. This last item is to ensure CatQWK will not be overwriting or deleting existing files. The CONTROL.DAT file, which contains the names of the conferences, is extracted from the last mail packet processed. Therefore, you may want to arrange so that the latest mail packet combined is listed last. That will make sure you have the latest changes to the conferences on the BBS. None of the other files (NEWFILES.DAT listing, WELCOME screen, bulletins, etc.) are saved. Configuration file: This file may appear: - in the current directory - pointed to by the environment variable CATQWK - somewhere on your PATH For example, to set the environment variable CATQWK, type: SET CATQWK=C:\COMM either at the DOS prompt or as part of a batch file. The file itself needs only three lines. You do not need them all, the missing ones will retain their default values. The four commands are: WORKPATH=D:\ COMPRESS=PKZIP.EXE -m DECOMPRESS=PKUNZIP.EXE -o PERSONAL=My Name The WORKPATH may or may not end with a trailing backslash. It does not matter, CatQWK will figure that out and construct the work paths properly. Case is irrelevant. You may put any amount of spaces or tabs in front or after the equal sign. Note that you must include the extension for the compress and decompress programs as well. You may specify an absolute path to these programs, otherwise, the PATH will be searched to locate them. Also note that the options must be set for "move" for compress program and "overwrite existing file" for the decompression program. Examples are included for ARJ and LHA below: ARJ: COMPRESS=ARJ.EXE m DECOMPRESS=ARJ.EXE e -y LHA: COMPRESS=LHA.EXE m DECOMPRESS=LHA.EXE e -cm The PERSONAL line is used to create the PERSONAL.NDX file. By including a name here, all messages addressed to this user will be included in the PERSONAL.NDX file. This file is used by readers to flag messages addressed to you. The readers will allow you to read messages in here first. If you don't include a name here, the PERSONAL.NDX file will not be created. Last words: Some readers, such as Session Manager (by Patrick W. Hart), requires the mail packet be placed in conference order. (This is the way PCBoard mail doors work.) However, doing such with this program will be painfully slow. What this program does is simply concate- nate the mail files together, stripping the header and any trailing garbage, and recreate the index files. Fortunately, Session Manager has a command line switch to change this characteristic of the pro- gram. The user needs to use the "/tc" parameter when starting the program. This will tell SM to not expect the message file in con- ference order. Comments, bug reports, etc. are welcomed. I follow the Off-line Readers conference on RIME, ILink, and Intelec. I can also be reached in the Common conference of RIME. Happy off-line reading! I would like to thank the users of AMI BBS (run by Walter Tsin) in New York for playing with the program, trying to find bugs, as well as offer suggestions. I would also like to thank Jason Hills of Alpine BBS in Oregon for trying to break the program. [grin] Version history: 1.0 Can't seem to find this one 1.1 17 Mar 1991 Never released 1.2 31 Mar 1991 Never released 1.3 15 Aug 1991 Never released 1.4 29 Nov 1991 Never released 2.0 22 Dec 1991 Limited testing - Added configuration file - Added support for other archive programs - Much improved speed 2.1á 01 Jan 1992 Limited testing - Added support for wildcards [920101] - Moved documentation from the help screens to this file [920110] - Create the documentation [920110] - Changed some duplicate code into function or procedures. This resulted in a smaller EXE file (shrank the file by about 3K). [920111] 2.1 13 Jan 1992 First public release 2.2 09 Feb 1992 Second public release - Added routine to make the PERSONAL.NDX file (be sure to add the line PERSONAL=Your Name in your CatQWK.CFG file) - Fixed index file routine to work properly for conferences > 999 and > 9999 - Remove line that extracts *.PTR and *.PNT file because some archiver (LHA to be specific) does not generate the correct ERRORLEVEL return code upon this kind of error condition