DevClean release 11.15.99

Another basic program from my keyboard to yours...

DevClean will take archives from the GIGA site and clean them up by removing
useless header information and OneList subheadings.  You can download the
archives from:

http://www.giga.or.at/pub/ua/frua-dev

...and then clean them up to make them smaller.  That's all this program does
right now.  Pretty simple!

Examples:

  devclean frua9902.txt
  devclean vs frua9902.txt
  devclean -nb frua9902.txt /vs
  devclean -of:9902.txt frua9902.txt

This first command will run DevClean which will remove useless header
information based on preset defaults.  That's it!  The second command will
remove even more extraneous header information (To:, Content Length:, and the
"Lines:" fields).  You can enter the command line parameters in any order and
with or without the hyphen or slash.  The third command will remove even more
extraneous header information and also overwrite the original file with the
new.  The last command allows you to specify the output filename and cleans
with the preset defaults.

The only precaution that I might point out; you need to be sure you have the
hard drive space to handle the files.  The mailing list archives are usually
pretty big and you will have two copies of the month that you cleaned during
use of the cleaning program.

Future Goals:

 * Add switch to convert all files of specified extension
 * Sort messages by thread
 * Create a message viewer

Anyhow, should you discover any errors or have any suggestions for future
improvement, holler and I'll see about enacting it.

Don Ewald
dpe@mindless.com

Changes since release 5.4.99:

 1. I had removed my error checking while debugging DevClean; unfortunately,
    I had forgotten to reinstate it before uploading.
 2. Tightened coding and the DevClean also runs faster.
 3. Related to Point 2, I converted DevClean from Microsoft QuickBasic
    Extended v7.1 to PowerBASIC Compiler v3.50 for DOS.
 4. Added some information to the "devclean.txt" file.

 ...many thanks to Dan Autery (autery@aol.com) for pointing out an error. We
 never figured out why it didn't work on his machine; but, it gave me the
 initiative to tidy up my code and release this update.

Changes since release 5.18.99:

 5. Incorporated my own code to change the UNIX saved files into DOS saved
    files.  This lengthens the overall run time of DevClean; but, reduces the
    time actually spent converting files compared to older versions.

Changes since release 5.24.99:

 6. Added the "-vs" and "-nb" switches.
 7. Added list of options on output screen.

Changes since release 5.31.99

 8. Added a delimiter of "~~ #" between each message.  This will assist in
    some future release when I hope to add threading and a viewer (far
    future).
 9. Added support for the new OneList format.
10. Added the "-of:" switch to specify output filename.