[note to the astute readers: severe brain fatigue is setting in because on
any other day, I'd whip out an MPEX solution blindfolded and with one hand
behind my back, but today my brain is simply failing to grab ahold of a
concept here and make it work...]

Here's the scenario:  I have two systems running in parallel.  Each system
feeds the transactions that has occured upon it to a "logging" process on
the other system while simultaneously updating the "local" version of said
log file.  The upshot of this is that at any given moment, both systems
contain the same data, but not neccessarilly in the same order.   Due to a
mild snafu, one of the files got "out of synch", so while correcting it
(manually), I was considering "how can I autodetect these are not in synch
and perhaps correct (or notify someone about) the file?"

Here's the goal: using "simple standard CI programming" [or even "moderately
unusual shell programming" or "extensively obscure MPEX command files"]
determine that the EOF of two files, at a particular time when transaction
activity is "known to be quiesced", are indeed equal to each other.  Or,
more precisely, how can I set a LOCAL variable to reflect the FINFO of a
file on a remote system?  Ultimately, I'd like to set up a command that
looks roughly like this:

   :IF FINFO(<localfilename>,"EOF") <> FINFO(<remotefilename>,"EOF") THEN
COMPLAIN

The part that is being elusive, of course, is specifying the name of a file
on a remote system...

Tom Emerson
Sr. Systems Analyst
NDC | e COMMERCE
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626-258-4309
626-350-3832 FAX