Hi (again).

My mIRC seems to create new log files now and again, so that every channel has maybe 4-5 different log files. Since I often use mircstats, this kind of screws things up for me. Why does mIRC do this and how can I make it stop?

Make sure 'Date filenames' isn't checked in ALT+O > Logging.

It isn't.

The logfiles look like this: #channel.IrcNetork.log, #channel.IrcNetork.1.log, #channel.IrcNetork.2.log, #channel.IrcNetork.3.log, etc.

The .<number> logs are temporary and should be merged with the main log (#channel.ircNetwork.log)

If you want, you can check the temporary logs to see if they have been merged in the main log or not. If they have, then you can safely delete them.

The fact that they aren't being deleted automatically has been mentioned before, but, to my knowledge, there hasn't been a repeatable method of determining when they are or are not deleted.

In theory, I believe, they should be merged with the main log file when you leave a channel (whether by parting, quitting, or being kicked).

Also I believe this method of logging was stopped in version 6.3, so make sure you're using the latest version.

P.S. Love the avatar.

Ah, I see. Well, that pretty much answers all my questions. Thank you.

It's an odd system, though. Why use the temp log files and then merge them on part/quit/kick?

I am using the latest version. Although I've been updating the same installation for years now, so I suppose it might be possible that some old settings are still lying around.

EDIT: Richard Dawkins is a god among men. Pun intended.

possible those other logfiles are still from your old installation and no longer in use? check the timestamps and see if they have been updated any time recently

No, the they're all fairly recent. Although...hmm, the earlier ones may be from before I updated to 6.3. So you might be right.

It was added because there were complaints about logs being corrupted when people crashed. It was meant to help prevent more than a small amount of log being lossed due to this. In the end, I think people preferred the old method as the newer method just made things more troublesome.

There was a long discussion about this soon after 6.21 one was released :-)

Basically: if you connect to more than one server, all servers will end up using the same logfile names, resulting in mixed/corrupted logfiles. Quite a few people reported the issue over the years.

In 6.21 I rewrote the logging routines so that all logfile names were unique, using the .N format, to ensure that during logging logfiles were consistent and contiguous and were merged into the main logfile only once the associated window was closed.

Unfortunately most users didn't like the .N format for various reasons, so by popular demand I changed it in 6.3 back to how it behaved in previous versions.