Otherware/Otherware_1_SB_Development.iso/amiga/comms/bbs/bullchk1.lha/BullCheck.txt

Text File | 1992-03-30 | 10KB | 277 lines

Bulletin Check, by Todd Courtnage

Version 1.0





YAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My first ARexx program!!!!!!!!!!!







This is an ARexx procedure, meant to be put in your logon.trans.

What it does is check all the bulletins and see if any of them have
been updated since the users last call.  If so, it will tell the user
which ones have been updated, and ask the user to read them, because
they may contain very important, life and death material (not likely
tho :-).



First off, since this is my first ARexx program EVER, it's very poorly
written (but, hey, it gets the job done!  (for me anyway)).  The way
it goes about getting the dates of the bulletin files is very, very
crude, and could be (and will be!) optimized to make it MUCH, MUCH
better at what it does.  If you want to learn ARexx, DON'T LOOK AT MY
PROGRAM!!!!!!!  My baby here is probably the worst code ever written
for any computer!!!



If you want some more info as to what the program is trying to do, see
the "The Guts of the Program and Other Horror Stories" later in this
document.  It has a small story to tell too :-).



As for using it, well I figure if your smart enuff to own ARexx, your
smart enuff to know how to make it work :-).  Actually, there is some
work involved in getting it set up to work with your system (unless
you have the exact same setup as me, which is very unlikely).



First off, change the "bulletindir" variable to show the file path to
where your bulletin directory is.



Second, on the line immediately below where you specify your path,
enter the number of bulletins that you want to be checked to see if they
have changed since the user logged on last.


Thirdly, you have specify all the filenames of the bulletins you want
checked.  Don't include the path, because you entered the path earlier.

Note that you will probably have to adjust the number of "bull.#"
lines to suit your setup (i.e. if you only have 9 bulletins, you will
only have nine bull.# lines listed in the program).

For Example if you have nine bulletins, the lines in the program will
look like this:

        bull.1 = "filename1"

        bull.2 = "filename2"

        .

        .

        .

        bull.9 = "filename9"







Fourthly, (and lastly I think) you have to enter the names of the
bulletins (these should probably be the way they are listed in your
bulletins.cmds file.)  The number of bulletins named here should be equal
to the number you had above where you entered the actual filenames.



That should be just about it, except you have to copy the procedure to
your logon.trans file and make a call to the procedure somewhere in
your logon.trans (I do it at the end).



Limitations

        There are limitations to this program.  First of all, the dates
of your bulletin files should be sometime on or after Jan. 1, 1992
(for the reason for this, see "The Guts of the program and other
Horror Stories").  Also, this procedure will not be any good after
this year.  That's not a big problem, because I plan on doing a better
version within the next 8 months :-).



What's in the Future
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


        Well, first of all, clean it up A LOT!!!!!  By this I mean,
reading in the bulletins from the bulletins.cfg file (as well as the
number of bulletins).  Also read in the names of the bulletins from
the bulletins.cmds file.

        Find a better way to do calculations (like figure out a better
way to get the date of a file besides the way I'm doing it right now).

        Option for the user to read the bulletins right then and there.

        Maybe some ANSI support.

        Any other suggestions, bug fixes (which there are bound to be
lots).



The Guts of the Program and Other Horror Stories
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


        As I've mentioned before this is a program from hell.  I had
virtually no idea what I was doing when I was writing this.  The code
is appalling, ghastly, horrendous, and any other awful words you can
think of.

        If you've looked at the code already, you probably don't
understand any of it.  Well, here's the story of how I got from no
code to what the code you have in front of you now.

        I got the idea for this from other BBS programs that notify the
user when a new bulletin has been added or changed.  So I figure it
wouldn't be hard to write an ARexx program to do the same with
TransAmiga (and I hadn't seen any around).  So I start thinking about
it in my head.  I figure no problem.  Well, first I figure I gotta
find out how to get the file creation date of each of the bulletin
files.  No big deal, I thought.  I start looking for a command in the
ARexx manual to do that, and do you think I could find one???????  No
way!!!!  The closest command I could find was STATEF(), but according
to the ARexx manual that only returns a files length, blocks,
protection and comment.  I thought it was over right then and there.
I had thoughts of maybe having a text file where you'd have to type in
the dates of all the bulletin files, and whenever you changed a
bulletin, you'd have to change the corresponding line in this text
file so Bulletin Check (the name of my program) would know of the
change.

        Well, this wasn't acceptable.  So later that evening, I was
browsing thru the Feb. 1992 issue of .info.  I happened across the
ARexx column, and started looking at it, and after looking it over I
realized all my problems were solved!!!!  This issue just happened to
explain how to get the file date from a file!

        A-ha!!  All my problems are solved ............. NOT!!!!!!

        Well, I did what they were doing in there column to check the
dates of files and see if the files were newer or older.  (In fact the
column compared the two files and decided if one was newer, it would
copy it over to another directory.  It was an updating file copier
written in ARexx.)  Well, I was following there instructions, for
using the STATEF() function, but was getting weird values when it came
to the date.  I kept getting high numbers like 5177 and 5263 and I
couldn't find ANY relationship between the dates and these numbers.  I
spend literally HOURS trying to figure out what (I thought) I was
doing wrong.  I made little changes here and there, and still wasn't
getting what I was "supposed" to be getting (naturally, to make life
even harder I kept making little mistakes that would make the program
not function at all and that ate up even more hours of debugging).

        Anyway, after hours and hours, I FINALLY found somewhat of a
relationship between the numbers I was getting.  If I took one of the
large numbers from one file (say 5177), and subtracted from that
another large number (like 5123), the result was the number of days
between the dates of the files.  Well, further investigation revealed
that if I took the numbers and converted them to years, that these
numbers showed the number of days between some date in 1978 (there's
something magical about 1978 and the Amiga, but I'm still not sure
what) and the date of the file (when the file was last changed).

        So hence, maybe know you can start to understand where all those
weird numbers in the code are coming from.  I ended up having to take
some arbitrary date (I used Dec. 31, 1991), and from there calculate
the number of days from that date to when the files were changed.  So,
from that I had to calculate which month it was and which day of the
month it was (and also assumed that the year of the file was 1992).
(You have to remember thru all this, I'm still very much a novice at
ARexx.  Some of you out there in TA land could probably whip up
something like this in less than half the time it took me).

        Well, anyway, that's most of the story.  Once I had the month and
day of the file, it was relatively easy going (compared to the hell of
figuring out the file stuff).  In fact, most of the program is about
the file dates, and trying to figure them out!

        Hmmm, not much else to tell about the program from hell.



Legalities
~~~~~~~~~~
I take no responsibility for anything (except if it's something good
:-)



Other Stuff
~~~~~~~~~~~
        I really want comments and suggestions on this (especially if you
know how to get the REAL date of a file!!!)  Anything else you want to
see added?  I can be contacted via the following means:



The ABYSS - [phone]     - This is my BBS

MEBBS][ BBS - [phone]     - The official Canadian support BBS for
                                                  TransAmiga.  I call here almost
                                                  everyday, so I can be reached here.

Internet:  My Internet address is [e-mail]

TransAmiga echo:  I'm always reading the TA echo, so you can send me
                           mail thru here if you want to give suggestions or
                           bug reports.

Netmail: Todd Courtnage at 1:140/140

CompuServe:  not suggested, as I hardly ever go on here (it costs a
                   fortune to call from Canada).  But if you REALLY want to

                   my usernumber is 71621,414.  There is no guarantee I'll
                  get your message this way tho.



Updates
~~~~~~~
        I will post updates at two locations.  On MEBBS ][, the official
TransAmiga support BBS in Canada, and on the ab20 Internet site (in
the incoming/amiga/TransAmiga directory).



Closing Comments

        Big text file for such a small program, eh? :-)  Well, this is my
first ever program I've written and released to be freely
distributable, so I went all out and wrote lots of stuff on it.  Now
that I'm starting to get the hang of ARexx, I'll be getting more and
more stuff out for TA (and maybe other ARexx programs, who knows).

Anyhow, I hope you all like this, and if anyone uses it, let me know,
I wanna know how well it's going over.  Just leave a message on the TA
echo (if you have access to it) would probably be the easiest way.



        Well, this is Todd Courtnage, closing off.