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1993-01-09
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DLcount 1.1a - Download counter for Remote Access 1.11
(C) 1992,93 William J. Dykstra
This is a download counter for Remote Access BBSes. This program should
work fine with RA 1.11 and any other compatable versions. DLcount supports
the standard FILES.BBS, where the FILES.BBS is located in the same directory
as the files are for each area. The program reads your FILES.RA file to
locate each directory. The program will ALSO work with BBSes that use the
Alternate File List path. This information is read from CONFIG.RA.
Many BBSes that use CD-ROM drives use the alternate file list path, and they
store all FILES.BBS files in one directory (as FILES.xxx, where xxx represents
each file area number). I could not find any download counter programs that
would work with this setup, so I made one. If you use the Alternate file
list path, then the program will FIRST look for a FILES.xxx for the proper
area in this directory. If it cannot find the proper FILES.xxx file, then
it will look for FILES.BBS in the normal file area directory. If it can't
find one there either, it will indicate this with an error message in the log
file.
All actions are logged to DLCOUNT.LOG, so you can track if a file could not
be located, or if a file area was not found.
Standard FILES.BBS style files are supported. For example:
(sample FILES.BBS)----------------------------------------------------------
TESTFILE.ZIP This is a test file.
WHATEVER.ZIP This is another test file. This is a testfile file
description, and I think you should stop reading it...
ANOTHER1.ZIP This is just another test.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The file description starts in column 14 in this format. If you have extra
spaces, don't worry about it. The number will be inserted at position 14.
Sample, after running the program, assuming each file was downloaded:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TESTFILE.ZIP [01] This is a test file.
WHATEVER.ZIP [01] This is another test file. This is a testfile file
description, and I think you should stop reading it...
ANOTHER1.ZIP [01] This is just another test.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This should work for just about every FILES.BBS out there.. if you have a
non-standard format, and it won't work properly, either go with the standard
format, or get in touch with me.. maybe I can make a patch for you.
The program reads your RA.LOG file, and gets the download stats from there.
NOTE that the RA.LOG will be modified! A 'Last Read Pointer' is placed at
the end of the file after the program reads it. Do NOT remove this pointer,
or the entire log will be re-read the next time the program is run, and you
the download stats will become inaccurate. You may, of course, delete the
log file if you choose, but you should be sure to run DLcount before deleting
it, to be sure the stats are recorded.
=============================================================================
Utility Files: SETCOUNT.EXE and COMBINE.EXE.
--------------------------------------------
COMBINE.EXE is a program that will allow you to combine several FILES.RA
files into one FILES.ALL file.
Some BBSes have several different copies of FILES.RA, for various reasons. One
good reason for doing this is in a case similar to mine. I am running a
CD-ROM drive, but I have four (4) CDs, and only one drive, so I can only
keep one disk online at a time. Thus, I have 4 different FILES.RA files (I
call them FILES.CD1, FILES.CD2, FILES.CD3, and FILES.CD4) to keep track of the
file areas on each disk. The problem with this is, only some of the file
areas 'exist' at one given time, but a RA.LOG file may contain downloads from
several different CD-ROM disks. If you run DLcount, it reads FILES.RA to
find the file areas to match the downloads in your RA.LOG, and it won't be
able to find any file areas for a disk that is not currently online!
For example: On MONDAY, Disk #1 is online, and someone downloads from, say,
the PASCAL file area. On TUESDAY, I put disk 2 online, and copy the FILES.CD2
file over FILES.RA, to show the proper file areas. Later on Tuesday I run
the DLcount program. DLcount searches RA.LOG, finds that a file was downloaded
from the PASCAL directory, and searches FILES.RA for this area. The problem
is, the PASCAL area no longer exists, because a different FILES.RA is now in
use. DLcount would then log an error message, and would not be able to
increment the counter for this file.
The solution to the above problem is simple: You need a FILES.RA that lists
ALL your file areas. The problem with this is, nobody wants to re-enter all
these file areas in RACONFIG. That's where COMBINE.EXE comes in. It will
allow you to supply all the filenames of the FILES.RA files you use, and it
will combine them into one complete FILES.ALL file (in the same format as
FILES.RA). You can then tell DLcount to read FILES.ALL, rather than FILES.RA,
and it will be able to track down all the file areas!
Note that even though you use several different FILES.RA files, you cannot
use the same area twice IF you use the alternate file list path, because a
FILES.xxx is stored for each file area, and you can't have two FILES.xxx
files with the same area number (xxx). There may be duplication in your
various FILES.RA files of course, as your hard drive will probably have file
areas on it that are always available, while only the CD-ROM areas may change.
There may be reused areas if you don't use the alternate file list path, as
each FILES.BBS is stored in a separate directory. This is the method that MOST
BBSes use. If you DO have reused file areas (but not duplicated, in other
words, they are totally different file areas, depending on which copy of
FILES.RA you use) then do NOT use COMBINE.EXE.
COMBINE will only use the FIRST occurence of the file area it finds, and will
ignore all other file areas using the same area number.
I hope I made this clear to you. If you use several FILES.RA files then
you should understand what I said. If you DON'T use several FILES.RA files,
then you don't need to understand it because you don't need to use it!
COMBINE.EXE will prompt you for the name(s) of the different FILES.RA files
that you want to combine into FILES.ALL. ALL of these files must be in the
current directory. FILES.ALL will be generated in the current directory as
well.
SETCOUNT.EXE
This program will scan all the file areas in FILES.RA (or you may specify
a different filename, such as FILES.ALL if you ran COMBINE.EXE) and will
place a download counter in front of every file description for every file
in your FILES.BBS files. [00] will be used. If a download counter already
exists, it will be ignored and no changes will be made to that file's
description, unless the download counter is a single digit. If a single
digit download counter, such as [0] or [2] is found, a leading zero will be
added, to make it a two digit counter. [0] would become [00], and [2] would
become [02]. Download counters that are already two digits (or larger) will
be left unchanged.
I recommend that you run this program to setup all your files with a initial
download counter. DLcount will run fine without this, but it makes your
file area lists look nicer if you have the proper download counters in every
file, rather than in only the ones that have been downloaded.
This program also supports the alternate file list path. It will search for
FILES.xxx in your alternate file list directory, if you have specified one.
If the program cannot find FILES.xxx in the alternate directory, then it will
look for FILES.BBS in the directory where the files for this area are stored.
If it cannot find a file here either, it will skip this area.
=============================================================================
Now that you understand why there may be a FILES.ALL file, or a file other
that FILES.RA that you might want to read instead of FILES.RA, I can explain
the optional parameters that this program can use.
You may specify two filenames on the command line. The first filename will
be the name of the log file that DLcount will read (in case you don't use
RA.LOG). The second optional filename will be the name of the FILES.RA file
to use, if you don't want it to read your current FILES.RA.
Samples: DLCOUNT MYLOG.LOG
The above example would read MYLOG.LOG instead of RA.LOG. FILES.RA
would still be used.
DLCOUNT MYLOG.LOG FILES.ALL
The above example would read MYLOG.LOG instead of RA.LOG, and it would
read FILES.ALL instead of FILES.RA.
USE THESE PROGRAMS AT YOUR OWN RISK! I ASSUME NO RESPOSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGE
THAT MAY IN ANY WAY BE CAUSED BY YOUR USE OF ANY OF THESE (FINE) PROGRAMS!
I have tested them very extensively, so there should be no problems. You might
want to backup your FILES.BBS files before running DLcount though, to see if
it works properly with your system.
This program is FREEWARE. For comments or suggestions, I can be
reached on:
The BillBoard BBS
(416) 898-2443
Newmarket, Ontario. Canada.
14.4k v.32bis/v.42bis
or on Canada Remote Systems (CRS), in the IBM or Pascal conferences.
I may also be reached via NANET mail, in the above two conferences.
Address all mail to BILL DYKSTRA.