DLA - Date of last access. This program implements the often requested date of last access feature for VMS, using the expiration date field in the file header. To use DLA, you must first enable expiration dates on your disks thusly; SET VOLUME/RETENTION=(9998-,9999-) DUA0: This command will cause VMS to update the expiration date of files which are accessed (read or write). The difference of 1 between 9998 and 9999 causes VMS to update the field only the first time it is accessed in a 24 hour period (to reduce overhead on frequently accessed files). In case you were worried about files expiring, 9999 days is about 27.4 years... I myself believe that VAXen will be history by then anyway (except government). DLA opens each file in the wildcard expression, and calculates date of last access and number of days since last access. DLA reports filename, allocated size, date of last access, days since last access and owner. NOTE: Due to the fact that the expiration date has a granularity of minutes, and DLA only deals in whole days, you may see files that were last accessed on the same date, but have a different number of days since last access. NOTE: Until the first time a file is accessed after the "SET VOLUME/RETENTION" command is issued, the file has zeroes in the EDT field. For those files, DLA displays "<>". DLA displays "<>" or "<>" if it is unable to open the file. It displays "<>" if date translation fails. If strange dates of last access appear, it could be caused by files which were copied from a foreign system that actually uses file expiration for it's original purpose (ZOUNDS!). To fix both of these problems, it is suggested that you "touch" all of the files on a disk immediately after doing the "SET VOLUME/RETENTION" by using the GROPE program. To build DLA, see the BUILD.COM command procedure. To invoke DLA, first define a symbol; DLA :==$SYS$LOGIN:DLA assuming that DLA.EXE resides in your home directory. Then issue commands thusly; DLA ! Look at files in current directory DLA [...] ! Look at files in subsequent subdirs DLA dua0:[*...]*.c ! Look at all .c files on DUA0: DLA/AGE=90 ! Look at all files 90 days or older The /AGE option may appear anywhere on the command line. Default wildcarding is *.*;*. Note that files will always be displayed, since DLA has no way to determine their age.