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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!ll-xn!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!decwrl!reid
From: reid@decwrl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.news.adm,net.news.group
Subject: intermittent bug fix in 16-bit arbitron version
Message-ID: <6054@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Wed, 22-Oct-86 13:38:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.6054
Posted: Wed Oct 22 13:38:52 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Oct-86 23:30:17 EDT
Reply-To: reid@decwrl.UUCP (Brian Reid)
Distribution: world
Organization: DEC Western Research
Lines: 25
Xref: mnetor net.news.adm:737 net.news.group:3575


When arbitron was reworked so that it would run on 16-bit computers a subtle
bug was introduced. That bug causes false readings during periods of 
newsgroup name changeovers: if a newsgroup is rmgroup'ed but an entry for it
is still present in the .newsrc file, and if the user was current in the 
group at the time it was rmgroup'ed, then the readership for that group wil
be incorrectly tallied to the valid group that comes just before it in
alphabetical order. This causes, for example, net.religion.christian and
net.religion readers to show up as readers of net.rec.wood. (I discovered
this bug when net.rec.wood suddenly doubled in size--net.religion and
net.rec.wood have about the same number of readers, and suddenly all of them
were lumped in net.rec.wood).

This is a transient phenomenon and it will stop happening as soon as the 
reorganization settles, but if you want to fix the bug in your copy of 
arbitron, make this patch:

157c157,158
<       NF == 3 { n1 = split($3, n2, "-")
---
>       NF == 3 { if ($1 != grpname) next;
>                 n1 = split($3, n2, "-")

Arbitron 2.4, which will be distributed with this month's posting, has this
bug fixed and a few other minor details corrected.