>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Rodney Payne, Support Team" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: zone files
>
>right i know that
>
>I can not get any program to open it - it runs out of memory
>
>any ideas
>
It's a very large file - maybe you need more memory.
Any program that tries to read the whole file into memory in one piece will
probably give you trouble. Unix (Linux) tools are typically designed to
handle large files better than, say, Microsoft Notepad. But it is possible
to handle these files using MS operating systems. If you have vbscript
installed (by default in Windows 2000), you can use script files to do what
you want. Let's say you have managed to download and un-gzip com.zone.gz
and want to write the first 500 lines to a smaller file for study. This
would do it:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
' Windows Scripting Host Zone File Script
'
Dim fso, fi, fo, tsi, tso, i
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set fi = fso.GetFile("C:\Temp\com.zone") 'Input File
fso.CreateTextFile "C:\Temp\First500.txt" ' Create file.
Set fo = fso.GetFile("C:\Temp\First500.txt") 'Output File
Set tsi = fi.OpenAsTextStream(1,-2)
Set tso = fo.OpenAsTextStream(2,-2)
For i = 1 to 500
tso.WriteLine tsi.ReadLine
Next
tsi.Close
tso.Close
MsgBox("Wrote first 500 lines to file")
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Code is as-is, do not blame me if it doesn't work or causes a global
catastrophe. I am not a competent programmer.
Assuming you want to use your access to the root zone files to find expired
domain names to register, here are some more problems you will run into,
once you are able to get past the size of the zone files (much of this has
been discussed before on this list - check the archives).
1. Not all registered domain names are even IN the zone files. Only active
ones with name servers assigned are.
2. Not all domain names which disappear from the zone files have expired.
You can remove your domain name from the zone file by deleting the name
servers.
3. Not all expired domain names are dropped from the zone files (or maybe it
just takes years).
4. Not all expired names ever actually become available (or maybe it just
takes years).
5. The number of names dropped from the zone files each week is very large,
and most are worthless.
6. The time between an expired name being dropped from the zone files, and
becoming available, if it ever does, is unpredictable, and varies from zero
to approximately infinity.
7. A really good domain name that expires, is dropped, and becomes
available, seems to remain available for about 5 seconds.
Good luck, and if your name starts popping up on those first-5-second
registrations, I will get back to you with a few questions of my own.
