Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!att!cbnews!r4
From: r4@cbnews.ATT.COM (richard.r.grady..jr)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Wildcarding in RN Kill Files
Message-ID: <11714@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 26 Nov 89 00:10:51 GMT
References: <1989Nov24.214512.17908@athena.mit.edu>
Reply-To: r4@cbnews.ATT.COM (richard.r.grady..jr,54354,mv,3a018,508 960 6182)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 34

In article <1989Nov24.214512.17908@athena.mit.edu> wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr) writes:
>
>How can I build a killfile that will match on a character string
>within the subject line of an article, regardless of what, if any,
>characters precede or follow that string?
>
>For example, I don't care about articles in rec.arts.movies that deal
>with movie soundtracks.  What I'd like to do is put into my
>~/.../wdstarr/rec/arts/movies/Kill file something like:
>
>	/*oundtrack*/:j
>
>where either asterisk will match on anything.  

If all you want to do is match on a particular string of characters,
you don't need the asterisks.  Just use

	/soundtrack/:j

The search is not case sensitive, so this matches "Soundtrack" as well.

The only time you need asterisks is to search on TWO strings separated
by an arbitrary number of characters.  For example

	/soundtrack.*music/:j

The "." means any character, and the "*" means zero or more of the
preceeding character, so ".*" matches any number of characters.
The search pattern matches "soundtrack" followed by any number of characters
followed by "music".

--
Dick Grady              r_r_grady@att.com             ...!att!mvuxd!r4 
The above opinions are mine, and not necessarily those of my employer.