Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site sdcrdcf.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!hplabs!sdcrdcf!lwall
From: lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: More care needed in saving drafts
Message-ID: <2199@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 26-Jul-85 14:24:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcrdcf.2199
Posted: Fri Jul 26 14:24:20 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Jul-85 07:22:02 EDT
References: <3@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Reply-To: lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall)
Distribution: net
Organization: System Development Corp. R+D, Santa Monica
Lines: 22

In article <3@brl-tgr.ARPA> wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) writes:
>We *desperately* need a fix to rn's Pnews process so that it saves the
>draft in /tmp until after _everything_ has completed successfully. 

That's kind of difficult, because the fault in this case was inews, not
Pnews.  Pnews waits for inews to exit with a status that is supposed to
say whether the posting was successful.  Unfortunately, inews sometimes
lies.  I don't know what Pnews can do about that, except perhaps to 
implement the AUTHORCOPY option, which would save everything you post
forever and ever.  Too bad there isn't a way to say "Delete this file in
3 hours" without leaving a process hanging around.

Maybe we should make the temp file ~/.article, or some such, and just leave
it around till the next time you post.  That would also help the people who
lose the /tmp file when the system crashes.  Hmm, that should really be
"${DOTDIR-$HOME}/.article", in case people are sharing accounts.

Okay, I'll send out a patch for it.  A little more cruft in DOTDIR, but
who's counting?

Larry Wall
{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!lwall