Hi Manny - Thanks for the reminder.  I am sorry for so much delay.

What I want the program to do is ...

For each message arriving at a designated directory such as
MsgGroup@UDEL-EE, or maybe GroupEcho@UDEL-EE would be a good name for
a development directory:

  1.  File a copy of the original received message in an "incoming log
file" to preserve an exact copy of everything that is received, in the
exact order of receipt.

  2.  Modify a copy of the message by inserting a character string
plus an accession number in the beginning of the SUBJECT field, for
example:

        SUBJECT:  MSGGROUP#1599 New distribution processor for MsgGroup

    a.  The accession number should be incremented by 1 for each new
message.

    b.  The text string and the initial accession number might be
taken from a text file initiated by the owner of the directory, so
this can be a generalized program.  Perhaps this same file should be
used to keep the content of the last previous modified message.  Some
care must be taken to preserve the sequencing information, in case of
trouble. 

  3.  Remail the modified message to all the addressees in the
original message, including the sender, plus an additional group list
to be taken from a file, so that everyone concerned with this message
will receive a copy of with the modified SUBJECT for future reference.

    a.  The individual mailbox names in the group list should not be
visible in the delivered message.

    b.  A unique identifier for the group list should show in a header
address field.  In the example below, the identifier is a pathname
which recipients can use to find the file in case they want to see it.
The file of group members' mailboxes can be a copy that also exists in
several other places to provide easy access for everyone.

        REDISTRIBUTED-TO:  "[ECL]<MSGGROUP>MAIL.LST;49":

    c.  A header field should be inserted to show who redistributed
the message, and another to show the date and time of redistribution.

        REDISTRIBUTED-BY:  MSGGROUP at UDEL-EE
        REDISTRIBUTED-DATE: <date-time>

  4.  Place a copy of the modified and remailed message in a master
file of such messages to provide an official transcript log of group
traffic.  This file can be manually processed latter to organize its
contents into blocks of messages, such as MSGGROUP#.1551-1600.  

    a.  You can require that at least a copy of the very last remailed
message must be present in the "log of remailed" traffic.  You may want
to double check this message against the "last remailed accession"
number to guard against trouble.  

    b.  Or, perhaps it would be best to use the "last remailed
message" as the place to hold the information for assigning the next
accession number, and avoid the complications of having separate
records to synchronize.  The whole procedure could then be initiated
by providing an initial "last remailed log" file containing the text
string and the first number to be incremented.  In this case, you need
to establish a rule for parsing the subject to isolate the text and
accession number strings.

  5.  We should think about what to do in case of trouble, with an
automatic message to be mailed to the people who are responsible for
administration of the group operations.

If you have any questions, please ask.  We should negotiate features
as you proceed with the design.

Best - Stef