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.