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From: rdc30med@nmrdc1.nmrdc.nnmc.navy.mil (LCDR Michael E. Dobson)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Problem with Cnews 7Sep90 sys file
Message-ID: <1990Sep13.165647.819@nmrdc1.nmrdc.nnmc.navy.mil>
Date: 13 Sep 90 16:56:47 GMT
References: <1990Sep12.151805.4334@nmrdc1.nmrdc.nnmc.navy.mil> <1990Sep12.222603.22914@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: Naval Medical Research & Development Command
Lines: 37

In article <1990Sep12.222603.22914@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>In article <1990Sep12.151805.4334@nmrdc1.nmrdc.nnmc.navy.mil> rdc30med@nmrdc1.nmrdc.nnmc.navy.mil (LCDR Michael E. Dobson) writes:
>>... in errlog "relaynews: whitespace in system name (or 
>>exclusions) for sys file entry ` '".  To correct the problem and get the batches
>>processed I had to remove the blank lines in the sys file.
>>
>>I thought blank lines were ignored in the sys file.  The prototype sys file
>>has them.  Has anyone else seen this behavior?
>
>I think the problem here is an ambiguity of wording:  *empty* lines are
>ignored, but the ones you've got were not empty -- they contained one
>space character each.  This may be the result of getting your distribution
>via some data-mangling network like Bitnet that does not preserve empty
>lines.  (Some operating systems are incapable of storing a truly empty
>line -- there must be at least one character in each line in their files.)
>The prototype sys file, as shipped, has really empty lines.
>
Hmmm, I ftp'd my original cnews.Z from your site (25-May-90) then applied the
two patches.

>C News has been misinterpreting those non-empty blank lines all along,
>probably (!), but only now has it started complaining.  The Sept 1 patch
>added checking for inappropriate white space in sys lines, because C News
>is fairly intolerant of random white space in there and people were being
>tripped up by this.

Could be what happened since the sys file hadn't changed between the 25-May-90
version I installed originally and the 7-Sep-90 version I brought up this week.

I can try putting the *empty* lines back in for readability.  How about
TABS at the beginning of continuation lines? (None of the errors logged included
a system name).
-- 
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