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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!umcp-cs!cvl!umd5!zben
From: zben@umd5 (Ben Cranston)
Newsgroups: net.news.b,net.news.adm
Subject: Re: rn and .newsrc
Message-ID: <1150@umd5>
Date: Fri, 25-Jul-86 14:28:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: umd5.1150
Posted: Fri Jul 25 14:28:39 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Jul-86 22:02:38 EDT
References: <3694@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Reply-To: zben@umd5.umd.edu.UUCP (Ben Cranston)
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 39
Keywords: rn .newsrc
Summary: Unfortunate result of xref code
Xref: mnetor net.news.b:332 net.news.adm:604

In article <3694@ut-ngp.UUCP> merworth@ut-ngp.UUCP (Boyd Merworth) writes:

> I have "rn" installed on a VAX 11/780 running 4.2BSD and
> bnews 2.10.3 (January 1986 version).  There seems to be a
> problem with the way rn updates the .newsrc file.  ...
> If I have a group marked in my .newsrc file to which I
> do not subscribe, why does rn keep appending article numbers
> to that entry if the article has been cross-posted to a group
> to which I subscribe?  Eventually, if readnews is invoked on
> login, I get an error message, ".newsrc line too long".  The
> line is even too long for vi to handle!

Yes, this happens.  Rn is trying to update .newsrc to reflect the fact
that you read that item.  Items cross posted to many groups get marked as
read in all the groups, the ones posted only to the unsubscribed groups are
represented by the gap.

There is an argument that what it does is the right thing (i.e. that this is
not a bug, it is a feature).  If you resubscribed to the group, rn will now
be able to present you with only the items you really have not read...

My personal opinion is that if I resubscribe it would be OK for rn to show
me ALL the remaining messages in that group, to jog my memory, so it would be
ok by me to not ever mark items read within unsubscribed groups.  Others may
argue with this though.  Larry, are you listening?

Anyway, I periodically run my .newsrc through this cleanup script, which
essentially closes the gaps.  This does NOT do what I asked for above, it
makes everything READ (not UNREAD), but it does keep .newsrc sane:

sed -n \
-e ':again' \
-e 's/[-,][0-9]*[-,]/-/g' \
-e 't again' \
-e 'p'
-- 
                    umd5.UUCP    <= {seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben
Ben Cranston zben @ umd2.UMD.EDU    Kingdom of Merryland Sperrows 1100/92
                    umd2.BITNET     "via HASP with RSCS"