Mark Bixby writes:

> My new patchman patch analysis SH script is available for testing.

Nice work, Mark! :)  My personal favourite is

        SIMEDK4A  Patch to Solve the Year 2000 Problem.

Yet another reason to use a 3000!  One little patch, and the problem
is solved! ;)


I have a few requests, if I may, based on getting this to work:

   1. As the MPE machine I tried this on doesn't have FTP access
      outside the firewall (even though it was still to an hp.com
      site!) I had to download the us-ffs files manually with a
      web browser, then ftp to the target machine.  Thus, I had
      to hack the script to specify these files on the command line.

      Request:  Allow the files to be specified on the command line
                instead of requiring them to be downloaded by the
                script.


   2. When the ftp connection failed, there was no error checking
      to see if the transfer was successful.  I came up with a
      wacky hack (below), but no doubt there's a better way.

                ftpstatus=`callci 'echo !FTPLASTERR'`

                if [ $ftpstatus -lt 0 ]; then
                   echo 'The ftp transfer appears to have failed.\n'
                   exit 1
                fi

      Request:  If the script attempts the ftp transfer, then check
                to see if it worked.


   3. I know I picked the wrong way of getting the script onto the
      MPE box.  (I copied from the http address in the web browser,
      pasted into an email to a UNIX box, saved the script to a text
      file, editted the file to remove mail headers, and finally ftp'd
      to the MPE box.  Could I possibly have taken a worse route?)

      As a result of being a pickle-head ;) I effectively managed
      to convert split "long" lines into multiple single lines.
      Of course, this caused the script to fail in those places.

      Request:  Keep the lines <= 80 bytes, using continuation chars
                when needed.


Obviously, there's nothing serious here.  (Probably the toughest part
of the script will be maintaining the TLAs in the 'for' loop.)

Really nice, Mark -- thanks for passing it on! :)

--Glenn

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