Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ogicse!schaefer
From: schaefer@ogicse.ogc.edu (Barton E. Schaefer)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mush
Subject: Re: Sorting Chronologically by Subject
Message-ID: <10688@ogicse.ogc.edu>
Date: 19 Jul 90 18:23:24 GMT
References: <8468@ur-cc.UUCP> <9007191558.AA02321@Morgan.COM>
Organization: Oregon Graduate Institute (formerly OGC), Beaverton, OR
Lines: 40

In article <8468@ur-cc.UUCP> gsgi_ltd@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Gregory Gibson) writes:
} Is it possible to sort mail chronologically by subject in both 7.0.4 and
} 7.1.2.  By "chronologically by subject", I mean that all the messages
} will the earliest subject in the folder would be first, then all the
} messages with the second oldest subject, etc.

Sorry, there isn't any (easy) way to do this.  You can sort by subject and
chronologically within subject with "sort -s -d" (assuming you have 7.1,
older versions can't handle this), but you can't sort groups of messages
based on the characterstics of one message in the group.

In article <9007191558.AA02321@Morgan.COM> dpk@Morgan.COM (Doug Kingston) writes:
} What we really want for Chronological Topics is the following
} 
} 1. Sort mail by date.
} 2. For each subject starting at the oldest, pull forward any other
} messages with the same subject line (with or without re:).
} 
} Is this possible?

It is if you use temp files.  Thus:

    # Sort by date
    sort -d
    # Make sure message 1 is the current message
    from - 1
    # Save and delete all messages with this subject
    eval -h 'pick -s %s | save tempsort | delete'
    update
    # Repeat the above until all messages have been moved
    # to "tempsort".  Make a cmd of it for easy repetition.
    # When the folder is empty, read "tempsort" back in:
    merge tempsort
    sh rm tempsort

"cut" and "paste" cmds using a similar trick were posted here some
while ago.  The ability to move messages around arbitrarily without
resorting to temp files is on the TODO list.
-- 
Bart Schaefer						schaefer@cse.ogi.edu