On Wed, 24 Mar 1993 13:59:24 CST Jeremy Butler said:
>  ...is there also some way to get info on the use of a FILELIST--like
>  how many times a particular file has been requested?
 
There is no feature built in to LISTSERV to do this, but it can be done.
(And can be done fairly easily, in fact.)
 
One option you have when files are stored is to specify that a program be
executed (usually this would be an EXEC) each time the file is requested.
Although this was originally meant so that additional validation could be
performed before the file is sent out, you can do all sorts of neat things
with this, including having the exec save a counter someplace.
 
We have a very simple exec for some of our files - the exec just sends a
message to a server which keeps track of the files being requested.  (An
exec which sends a message is certainly low overhead and it also ensures
that silly stuff will not occur (such as LISTSERV's disk filling up because
the counters ate up all the free disk space).
 
In short, the LISTSERV maintainer has to initially set up the FILEID file
so that the exec is called, and the exec has to be made accessable to
LISTSERV.  Other than that, it is more or less automatic.
 
(Won't get into details here about how to call the exec since that is
probably beyond the scope of an owner's list - I hope the maintainers
know how.  In short, it is just an additional parameter on the FILEID
line... something like *DEFAULT* X5/301 <execname> will ensure that
<execname> gets called from a GET/SENDME for every new file you store.
The LSTSRV-L archives probably have more info on this).
 
Bill Gruber
City University of New York Computer Center