On Thu, 16 Sep 1999 09:36:27 -0500 David Young said:
>I've been thinking about doing something like what you're asking about to
>deal with lists created each semester for courses.  I haven't really found a
>simple solution, though.  The Change-Log feature (Change-Log= Yes) helps,
>but the files take up quite a bit of space for very active lists.  It would
>be really handy if Listserv could keep a "last post" date accessible via a
>SHOW command for easier checking.  I currently keep an archive of list
>requests which sometimes contain a termination date and use that information
>to periodically clean up my lists.  I hope you find a solution.
>
IF your lists are archived the date of each file making up the archives for
a list is a very good indicator of the 'last used' date.

While I am doing this from VM on the mainframe, the same technique should
work on other platforms. I have an exec (script) that runs weekly and pulls
a list of the current lists, parses their headers for basic info and updates
an info file with new lists. Since our standard for list headers requires
the keyword pharse: "CLASS LIST FOR xxxxxxxx" I can distinguish the class lists
from the others. The date the record is created (first time list is seen)
and a keyword identifying the list as a class list, then allows me to run
another script after semester's end to generate delete commands for the archive
files. I leave the list defined and our support staff does deletes after the
next term starts.