Okay, so I tried this:
.KEY filedate/A,sourcepath/A,destpack/A
.BRA {
.KET }
cd {sourcepath}
echo "Scanning directories for archived files at {sourcepath}"
c:list files since {filedate} all lformat %P%N > ram:t/archlist
lha -a -e -x a {destpack} @ram:t/archlist
Saved it in c:, set the script bit, and ran it on dh0: worked fine. (yay!) I then ran it on DH2: where after a minute, it generated a " c:list failed returncode 20". I checked the archlist file and the last line indicated "bad template".
Dh2 is my main work partition and probably has 5k files on it.
This looks like a good solution - when I mentioned Arexx, my brain was still in "its Monday" mode. I mean to say Ados/arexx.
Any idea what the issue is?