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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!mcnc!gatech!cuae2!ihnp4!pegasus!hansen
From: hansen@pegasus.UUCP (Tony L. Hansen)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Is the history file really needed anymore?
Message-ID: <2928@pegasus.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 21-Jan-87 00:16:59 EST
Article-I.D.: pegasus.2928
Posted: Wed Jan 21 00:16:59 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 22-Jan-87 03:37:31 EST
References: <5504@ukma.ms.uky.csnet> <2924@pegasus.UUCP> <116@falkor.UUCP>
Reply-To: hansen@pegasus.UUCP (60021254-Tony L. Hansen;LZ 3B-315;6243)
Organization: AT&T-IS Labs, Lincroft, NJ
Lines: 51

Summary:


< Tony is right that the news software no longer needs the history file.
< However, I've found that I, as the news administrator, sometimes do.
< I have found it useful in determining whether an article has arrived,
< which newsgroup(s) it can be found in, etc.  Also, when one of my neighbors
< has had a glitch where they have lost a day's news, but they have multiple
< feeds, I've found it useful for creating a file of message-ids that
< arrived at my site during the period in question.  That file of message-ids
< can be easily packaged into an "ihave" control message.  So, I guess I'd
< prefer to have the history file around, at least as an option which I
< could select.

(This discussion concerns a system which does not use the DBM library
option.)

The contents of history can always be recreated by doing:

	cat LIBDIR/history.d/?

Oh, they need to be sorted by time of arrival before being looked at? Then
merge them back together with the '-m' option to sort:

	sort -m +1 LIBDIR/history.d/?

Want a list of all message id's?

	cut -f1 LIBDIR/history.d/?

Need to find article <116@falkor.UUCP>? Just look in LIBDIR/history.d/6, and
your search time will be 1/10th of the old search time. Just use the digit
before the '@' sign to find the history file to look in. If there is no
digit or no '@', then use file 0.

The only things which I've found to be not as easy are:

	1) what time did the last article arrive?

	ls -l LIBDIR/history
		becomes
	ls -lt LIBDIR/history.d

	2) what were the last few articles which came across?

	tail LIBDIR/history
		becomes
	for I in LIBDIR/history.d/?;do tail $I;done | sort +1 | tail

I've been using this code for over a year now (it was first installed into
2.10.3), and I appreciate not having the extra 2000 blocks wasted space.

					Tony Hansen
					ihnp4!pegasus!hansen