FileAge / Author: David H. Bennett / Date: 5-3-95 / Version: 1.0

  Returns the age of the file in Minutes, Hours, or Days as an
  errorlevel.

Usage: 

  FILEAGE [[drive:][path]filename[ ...]]

Returns:

  Error Levels:
 
      0-119   - Minutes Old
    120-166   - Hours Old-118
    167-253   - Days Old-165
        254   - More than 88 Days old
        255   - ERROR

Just another day in network maintenance hell...

  I have a customer that has as 286 box hooked to their Netware network
  that operates as an MHS & Internet mail gateway running Connect2 from
  Infinite Technologies and UGATE from The Hunger Project.

  Occasionally this machine will lock up (Being the 7 year old 286 that
  it is).  The System Supervisor there is aware that she should check
  the Connect2 status screen every morning to make sure the clock in
  the upper right hand corner is still running but occasionally she 
  forget's to do this as it is a boring and mundane task.  The day she
  forget's to do this, is inevitably the day it will lock up.

  My solution was to check the age of a file (Namely 
  SYS:MHS\MAIL\PUBLIC\NETMGR.QUE) to help determine if the mail gateway 
  is locked up and send a message to the supervisor if it is.  I place a 
  batch command to check this at several places throughout the system 
  including the System Login Script,  the batch file I use to run windows 
  and several other batch files that workstations have need to execute 
  during the day.  The general result is that the supervisor will be 
  incessantly pestered until they go reset the gateway.  Hopefully, this 
  will eventually lead the customer to upgrade their mail gateway 
  (Probably to a slightly less ancient 386).

  So I went out in search of a program that would help me determine the
  age of a file in minutes.  I searched Simtel, CICA,  Compuserve, 
  etc..  I finally got tired of searching!  Once again I was forced to 
  write another stupid little utility in C (This time I actually used 
  C++ features).  So I bitched and whined my way through every squiggly
  brace and bitwise operator until I finally hacked out a program that
  did what I needed to do.  When all was said and done,  I spent about
  half the time writing this little blob as I did searching for an
  existing program that would do this.

  The ironic twist is that you are probably searching for a utility to
  do some stupid file age related task _RIGHT_NOW_ and this one 
  probably won't suit your needs <grin>.  However,  maybe you have
  lucked out this time and this will do the trick for your situation.

  This is hereby released to the public domain.  Don't bother sending
  me any checks for $5.  They just clog up my mail box and make it 
  harder for my wife fill out the deposit slips.  Perhaps you'll write
  something that will help me out someday....

Tech Stuff:

  This program was written using some recent Windows/CD based version 
  of Borland C++.  5 years ago I would have told you all about how I 
  wrote this but I've given up writing C/C++ code for making money,
  basically because the money smells better.  C/C++ is a great 
  language for poor impoverished computer geeks and large monolithic 
  software companies that employ dozens of poor impoverished computer 
  geeks to throw at their software projects.  But they are still 
  better off than those weirdos that program in BASIC.
  
  It uses two C++ classes included in the header file classlib\time.h 
  called TTime and TDate.  I have absolutely no idea if these are 
  standard C++ classes or some sort of thing that Borland invented.  It 
  _is_ a little better than programming in straight 'C'.  Anyway,  I 
  don't really care if it's standard or not as it does what I need.  

Author:

  ---------------------------------------------
  David H. Bennett
  Bennett Software Solutions
  2608 NW Fawn Drive
  Blue Springs, MO  64015
  ---------------------------------------------
  Phone: 816-228-8788
  Fax: 816-228-3204
  E-Mail: dave@bensoft.com
  CIS: 74635,1671
  ---------------------------------------------