MERGESYS AUXILIARY FILES DESCRIPTION


      NOTE to MERGEPRO users:  the files described below were written to
      manage BBS file lists.  They are also included with MERGEPRO because
      their techniques can be used in other ways, such as comparing two
      different lists of customers to find who is common to both lists.


      MERGESYS can greatly reduce the time you spend maintaining your BBS
      file listings by automating many of the processes you now need to
      perform manually.  It can even enhance your current setup by doing
      things you may never have considered.  Because it is so powerful, it
      can also seem overwhelming.  Five batch files are included that were
      written for another sysop with a PCBoard BBS (Charles Strusz, who
      inspired MERGESYS) to assist you in utilizing its many features.
      They are heavily commented and explain in detail how they operate.
      Their main purpose is to combine the BBS file lists with a CD-ROM's
      so callers do not have to access a ROM "door", search different
      areas, or download several lists in order to get a complete listing
      of your available files in a particular category.

      DIRDUPE.BAT shows how to combine CD-ROM and BBS file listings and
      remove duplicates within a DIR.  Each CRSDUPE?.BAT will remove
      duplicates across directories (and make a "master" file list) but
      with a different approach, depending on your preference.  To save
      space, CRSDUPE2 and 3 are incomplete (they no longer contain all the
      necessary cross file compares), but COMBINE.BAT can perform the same
      function as either one, as well as that of DIRDUPE.BAT.  Another
      file, BATNOTES, highlights MERGESYS's new "/EF" option (which can
      actually perform a crude sort, fixing sequence errors) and shows how
      MERGESYS can be used to update file listings each day.  The TRICKS
      file describes different ways in which MERGESYS can manipulate file
      listings, as well as how to remove the descriptions of a CD-ROM that
      is taken off-line.  The running time at the top of each batch file
      is how long it took that batch file to execute on about 100,000
      descriptions (the finished "master" list was almost 15 megabytes).

      These batch files are written to process 61 DIRs.  If you have the
      same number or less, you could probably use them with just minor
      changes, such as replacing the current paths with your paths.  DIR61
      is the main upload directory, DIR60 is a "misc" directory, and the
      rest are categorized.  The CRSDUPEs are large (the full size for 2
      and 3 is over 200K), but this is because the unregistered version of
      MERGESYS can only process two directories at a time.  The registered
      version will have a utility that can read from a list, and where
      there are 60 lines to do 60 "compares" now, just one will be needed
      (actually, ALL the compares in CRSDUPE2 and 3 could be done with one
      command line and a 61 line configuration file with the DIR names).


      PCBoard is a registered trademark of Clark Development Company, Inc.