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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Apology for repostings in alt - 2 C News bugs
Message-ID: <1990Sep25.153457.2612@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Sep24.220833.230@vicom.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 90 15:34:57 GMT

In article <1990Sep24.220833.230@vicom.com> lmb@vicom.com (Larry Blair) writes:
>... by removing the Message-ID and using `inews -d local'.
>Unfortunately, our version of C News (PL 18, if you were counting) only
>inserts `Distribution: local' if there is no Distribution header already
>present...

I don't think it has ever been clear what the semantics are supposed to be
if the same header crops up in both inews options and the article itself.
(Actually, we think most of the inews options are silly ideas, since it's
no harder to just plug the header into the article.)

>The path contained in the reposting shows `Path: vsi1!vsi1!...'.  I'm pretty
>sure that 2.11 checked for your site in the path to prevent propagation loops.
>C News obviously doesn't.  Is this a bug (or a feature :-)?  The path has to
>be scanned to determine whether to pass the article or not so why not check to
>see if your site is already in the list?

It's one more check to do on a critical path, and one that in normal (and
most abnormal) circumstances serves no purpose.  Loop breaking is normally
done by your neighbors not sending you the article, not by you recognizing
that it's yours.
-- 
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