25 Oct 12 04:45, I wrote to all:   
      
    ac> Or I could just not use Squish format, I suppose. On modern PCs with   
    ac> new filesystems, having few thousand *.MSG files in a single directory   
    ac> is not a big deal.   
      
   Actually in hindsight with *.MSG there's still a window where a tosser can   
   overwrite a message editor's newly-created .MSG file. The problem is that both   
   programs need to find the highest numbered .MSG file first before creating the   
   new message, and the time this takes even on a modern PC that could be quite   
   high - in the order of several seconds if the CPU is loaded, or the filesystem   
   is on a remote machine. During this window it's possible for the other program   
   to generate a new message, so the "highest message" counter can get out of   
   sync between the two programs. The higher the number of messages the more   
   likely it is to occur.   
      
   Just out of curiosity I hacked together two short Python programs. One to   
   create the .msg files initially, and the other to look for the highest   
   numbered .msg file. On my system both of these programs take less than a   
   second to run, but this is on a fast CPU on a local filesystem.   
      
   #!/usr/bin/env python   
      
   # Create 5000 files named 1.msg to 5000.msg   
      
   for i in range(5000):   
     fn = '%d.msg' % (i + 1, )   
     fp = open(fn, 'w')   
     fp.close()   
      
      
   #!/usr/bin/env python   
      
   # Find the highest numbered .msg file in a directory   
      
   import os, os.path   
      
   highest = 0   
      
   dp = os.listdir('.')   
      
   for fn in dp:   
     filename, ext = os.path.splitext(fn)   
     if ext == '.msg':   
       n = 0   
       try:   
         n = int(filename)   
       except ValueError:   
         pass   
       if n > highest:   
         highest = n   
      
   print highest   
      
   --- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20110223-b20110223   
    * Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)