By default, the ARCRET utility selects each archive index record in sequence. Since you may not always want this, several parameters are included so you can designate which rows/records you want to process.
Keep in mind that the ARCRET utility presumes every index record is a potential candidate for selection.
The first record in the first index file is read and checked against the selection criteria (unless you included the /REV parameter). The next record is then read and so on until all the records in the index have been examined. Each record is either accepted or rejected based on the parameters you specify.
You can use the /R parameter to skip a specific number of sequential transactions.
You can also use the /N parameter to indicate a maximum number of accepted transactions you want to process. By default, the ARCRET utility continues until the last index row/record is processed.
You use the /R and /N parameters to control where and when to stop processing. The /REV parameter lets you specify whether the utility should start at the beginning or the end of the file. These parameters can be useful when you have a large number of rows/records that will take a long time to process.
For example, suppose you can only process 1000 transactions a day with the plug-in you want to use and you have 3000 transactions in your archive. Potentially, that means it would take three days to process these transactions using your plug-in.
Assuming you are not using any other parameters, you would enter these commands:
Day 1: ARCRET /N=1000
Day 2: ARCRET /N=1000 /R=1001
Day 3: ARCRET /R=2001
Notice, that the first day, you did not have to specify the /R command, but you did specify to stop after processing 1000 transactions. The second and third days, you did specify how many leading transactions to skip. Note that on the final day, the /N parameter was omitted. If you know the remaining set of records will not exceed your maximum, you can omit this parameter.
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