Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!ucbvax!ORA.ORA.COM!jerry From: jerry@ORA.ORA.COM (Jerry Peek) Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh Subject: Re: FAQ, "scan -reverse," and BERK Message-ID: Date: 8 Apr 91 11:48:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 41 In <9104080926.AA13072@lotus.rd.nttdata.jp>, chandran@rd.nttdata.jp wrote: > On my man pages for scan, it says that > On hosts where MH was configured with the BERK option, scan > has two other switches: `-reverse', and `-noreverse'. These > make scan list the messages in reverse order. In addition... > man pages implies that I must use the BERK option... > I use > version: MH 6.6 #5[UCI] (lotus) of Mon Oct 1 18:08:20 JST 1990 Under MH 6.7, you don't need BERK to use scan -reverse. > The man page also go on to make the intriguing remark: > scan will update the MH context prior to starting the list- > ing, so interrupting a long scan listing preserves the new > context. MH purists hate both of these ideas. > Why do purists hate the second idea (or the first)? I wouldn't call myself a purist :-) and I didn't write the code or the man page. But the idea here, I think, is that an interrupt means "stop now!". A purist might think that the context should only be updated when an operation finishes successfully and would expect that an interrupt would keep the context from being updated too. But an average user will see that there's output from the folder's scan listing and assume that the context has already changed to that new folder. So, making scan work this way keeps non-purists happier. I guess. Here's an example that shows a context change not being made because an operation (removing a message) fails. This bites a lot of non-purists: % folder -fast foo % rmm +bar rmm: no cur message % folder -fast foo You might think that the "rmm" would change the current folder to "bar" -- but it doesn't, as you can tell from the second "folder -fast". About "scan -reverse": I don't know what anyone has against it. At the risk of offending all the purists out there :-), I think it's great. --Jerry Peek, jerry@ora.com, uunet!ora!jerry