The password should not be placed on the  first line of the file. When you do
a STORE operation  without specifying a new password, LISTSERV  adds a PW= key-
word at the BOTTOM  of the header. When LSVSORT is called,  it cannot know what
kind of  operation was performed,  nor can it know  whether the PW=  keyword on
line 1 was the one provided in the  STORE command or whether the list was pass-
wordless and it was intended as a new  password for the list. So it deletes it.
In V1.3e (don't think I distributed it to anybody) I had a restriction that the
list title *must* be the first non-blank comment line of the list, which exclu-
des placing  the password on the  first line. I removed  this requirement later
when I completely rewrote LSVKEYWD, but still I don't like the idea of keywords
before list title  (by the way, this  causes a new restriction  to list titles:
they cannot  contain any "=" sign.  You can't both  have the cake and  eat it).
 
  As for V1.4, as I told you I'm off the net for quite a long time, and hope to
be able to come back on weekends *when* my passcard for this trimester is ready
(even the  school director cannot  come on weekends  without a passcard  :-) He
knows it and he DOES sign one for himself regularly ;-) ). Since it's not ready
today, I doubt I'll be there at all this weekend :-( :-(
 
  Eric