Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!mindcraft.com!karish
From: karish@mindcraft.com (Chuck Karish)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Cnews expire problem... need help
Summary: This is way too complicated
Message-ID: <660770337.20986@mindcraft.com>
Date: 9 Dec 90 19:18:56 GMT
References: <1990Dec7.130639.15803@bnr.ca> <660596702.10086@mindcraft.com> <1990Dec8.190114.15171@sceard.Sceard.COM>
Organization: Mindcraft, Inc.
Lines: 30

In article <1990Dec8.190114.15171@sceard.Sceard.COM> mrm@Sceard.COM
(M.R.Murphy) writes:
>
>The following code cleans up a history file so that mkdbm is happy with it,
>and also replaces the single awk line that sifts a history file and prints
>only lines that are after a given time that I used in a modified expire scheme.
>The checking for goodness in a history line could be made fancier, but this is
>enough to make mkdbm happy. Makes for a pretty fast expire, too. Every so often,
>writing a short specialized tool in C is appropriate, though I'd rather use
>awk :-)

This C program is needed only to avoid re-writing the whole history
file during checking.  On my machine, the mkdbm step takes much longer
than the scan anyway and I have enough disk space for a second copy
of history, so I use this one-liner in sed:

sed -n 's/^<.*	/p'	# The white space in the pattern is a tab.

>...
>now=`getdate now`
>ago=`awk "/^\/expired\// {print ($now-(86400*\$(3)))} {next}" explist`
># replace the single-line awk with exphist
>#awk "{split(\$2,dates,\"~\");if(dates[1]>$ago)print \$0}" history >history.n

Doesn't this reproduce the functionality specified by the 'expired'
line in the expire control file?
-- 

	Chuck Karish		karish@mindcraft.com
	Mindcraft, Inc.		(415) 323-9000