Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!purdue!decwrl!vixie
From: vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie)
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.misc
Subject: Re: rn bug!
Message-ID: <937@bacchus.dec.com>
Date: 24 Nov 88 10:45:05 GMT
References: <26865@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <2672@sultra.UUCP>
Organization: DEC Western Research Lab
Lines: 32

# "Too many lines in .newsrc"
# Have you heard of malloc?  Dynamic storage allocation?  Come on, guy!
#  	Roland McGrath

Look at the source to RN.  There you will find spaghetti of vast levels of
complexity.  You will find five layers of #ifdef's, you will find three
parallel arrays and all the chaos that can cause, where a single array
of structures would have done the job perfectly and (in comparison) somewhat
elegantly.

RN is a hack.

RN is the most useful, more portable, easiest to install hack that I have
ever laid eyes on.  I have probably consumed more CPU seconds in my life
with RN than with any other interactive program.  But it's a hack.

RN 5.0 will not be a hack, we are told, and I am inclined to believe.

The question to be asked about RN is not "howcum it can't handle 700 lines
in a .newsrc," but instead: "howcum it still works after all these years."

# [...] send the .diffs to Larry for possible inclusion in later releases.
# 						- Der

There aren't going to be any more releases.  Larry has abandoned RN 4.X
to the winds of time, and once he gets Perl hacked up suffiently, he has
suggested that RN 5.0 will be his next project.  I will be very surprised
if any patches you send him for 4.X will be applicable to 5.0.
-- 
Paul Vixie
Work:    vixie@decwrl.dec.com    decwrl!vixie    +1 415 853 6600
Play:    paul@vixie.sf.ca.us     vixie!paul      +1 415 864 7013