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MBUTIL SORT
Usage:
MBUTIL Sort [-All] [-Backup] [-Pack]
The Sort command can be used to sort all unread messages by
board number and post date and time. This has two advantages:
+ When using combined read mode to read new messages for example,
you won't see messages from different boards mixed up.
+ It reduces the chance that you read a reply to a message before
you actually read the message that was replied to, which
happened pretty often to me and which was actually the reason
why I started writing MBUTIL in the first place! But from one
thing came another...
Reading replies before the original messages is in most cases
caused by echo mail processors that don't sort incoming mail
packets, but I think that DOESN'T HAVE TO BE the case, since a reply
can simply have a shorter or faster PATH than the message that was
replied to.
MBUTIL checks if there is enough disk space available. After that
it scans LASTREAD.BBS to find the highest message that was read by
all users. MBUTIL assumes there are actually messages to sort and
starts rewriting MSGHDR.BBS and MSGTOIDX.BBS while scanning
MSGHDR.BBS to find out where to start sorting. I could have used
MSGIDX.BBS for this, but the current way is more reliable and works
faster if there actually are messages to sort, which will most
likely be the case if you run Sort only each time new messages were
tossed in to the message base.
MBUTIL will remove all reply chains while sorting, so you should
run 'MBUTIL Link' each time you used Sort. The next version might
Link while Sorting. This version can sort up to about 9360
messages.
You can use '-All' to sort the entire message base, but THIS IS NOT
RECOMMENDED FOR BBS SYSTEMS, as IT DOES NOT UPDATE THE LASTREAD.BBS
POINTERS (I suggest you delete LASTREAD.BBS if you use this switch).
It was only added because some POINTS in the beta-team requested it.
Switches:
-All Sort entire message base (ignores LASTREAD pointers)
-Backup Keep the original MSGHDR.BBS as backup (.BAK)
-Pack Remove header records of deleted messages
The rest of MBUTIL is actually a clone of TosScan(q) Message Utility
(TSUTIL) 1.00, with some additions and improvements here and there.
TSUTIL was written by Mats Wallin and Joaquim Homrighausen. I hope
they won't be angry with me! ;-)
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