[Psientist]

I'm thinking of writing a comprehensive PBEM manager. One of the problems I have found with PBEM games is turn numbers - players think they have submitted the most recent turn, but they haven't.

For the host, once all the files are in place, the game does a good job of telling the host which player has played a turn. But since the players' turnfiles' names do not change - (e.g., "early_vanheim.trn", the confusion remains for the player.

How can one extract the current turn number from a player's turnfile? Is there a consistent way to extract that without revealing too much of the filestructure?