> Just wondering if any of you has created any software that is meant for your use only and will never see the light of the day for anyone else.<p>Sure: For an operating system, I wanted to concentrate on exactly one, one of Windows or Linux. For this, that, and those reasons I picked Windows. Most important tool, KEDIT. Next most important, Rexx scripting language. Software for own use, <i>console</i> applications. Real effort, starting a business. For this, developing a Web site. Got the code -- Visual Basic .NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET -- running as desired. Had a disaster, recovering, and spending too much time in <i>system management</i> mud wrestling and unanesthetised root canal procedures but getting back to the important computing and the business.<p>So, have ~100 of each of Rexx scripts, Kedit macros, and TeX macros. Will be moving back to working with Visual Basic .NET.<p>Just wrote a Rexx program of ~1200 lines of typing to do -- sitting down for this? -- file copying. WHYYYYY????? Did some copying, should have copied 99,024 files, but actually got only 41,462. Disaster.<p>So, wrote a Rexx <i>script</i> with three <i>sections</i>:<p>First, check and be clear on what copying want to do and use the Windows XCOPY, with carefully selected options, to
do the copying.<p>Second, use Rexx function SysFileTree to get a list of the files/directories that should have been copied and then, in a loop, one name at a time, use Rexx function SysFileExists to be sure the copying was done.<p>Third, one file at a time, again from SysFileTree, use the Windows program FC.EXE (<i>file check</i>) with option "/B" for <i>binary</i>, to check that all the files were actually copied correctly down to the last bit.<p>My software does some good checking on the work to be done and some good reporting on what was done so that, now, if something goes wrong, e.g., the case of 99,024 files where copied only 41,462, at least I will know there was a problem.<p>Right, tools for such things should have been rock solid 20+ years ago and shouldn't have to do that. But, only 41,462 out of 99,024 provided a "reality check" so wrote the code I did.