Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!coolidge
From: coolidge@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu (John Coolidge)
Newsgroups: news.software.nntp
Subject: Re: Useful NNTP Patch
Summary: First way is better
Keywords: nntpxmit speedup
Message-ID: <1989Aug31.231451.21630@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 31 Aug 89 23:14:51 GMT
References: <237@wugate.wustl.edu> <47388@oliveb.olivetti.com>
Sender: news@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu
Reply-To: coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu (John L. Coolidge)
Organization: U of Illinois, CS Dept., Systems Research Group
Lines: 38

jerry@olivey.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre) writes:
>A more important difference is in how the file was organized.  I write
>it as:

>	<messageID> pathname

>instead of the reverse.  This makes it much simpler to check for the new
>format.  It is only necessary to check if the first character is an "<".
>I was a little leary of the other format because there is no guarantee
>that an "<" won't be imbedded in a path name.  For example if one did an
>index for "<" on a pathname that looked like:

>	/usr/spool/newsfile/<890831FE03@foo.bar>

>one could confuse the pathname with an ID.  The above is a perfectly
>legal path name in Unix and I can immagine a news system that would use
>something like that.

You can't confuse a message ID with a pathname in the original format

pathname <messageID>

because the whitespace separating the pathname and messageID is enough to
make the distinction between the two obvious. Spaces are illegal in both
pathnames and messageID's, so the space is a unique separator.

Another (and, at least in my case, a more immediately important) reason
I like the original system better is that C News comes preequipped with
the ability to generate files of this form. Just replace the 'F' with an
'n' in the sys file entry, install the nntp side of the patch, and you're
saving i/o bandwidth immediately.

--John

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
John L. Coolidge     Internet:coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP:uiucdcs!coolidge
Of course I don't speak for the U of I (or anyone else except myself)
Copyright 1989 John L. Coolidge. Copying allowed if (and only if) attributed.