Path: utzoo!utstat!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!wang!fitz
From: fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Newsgroup hierarchy and sys file confusion
Message-ID: <1990Mar1.225310.6802@wang.com>
Date: 1 Mar 90 22:53:10 GMT
Organization: Wang Labs, Lowell MA, USA
Lines: 34

Apparently C-news handles newsgroup name matching in sys files differently
than B-news did, and I'm not sure how to get the old behavior back.  What
I'm trying to do is feed a parent group and one of its subgroups, without
feeding any of the other subgroups of the parent.

Just as a purely theoretical example, suppose someone wanted alt.sex and
alt.sex.bondage, but didn't want to get alt.sex.masturbation, ...bestiality,
...carasso or whatever anyone is likely to create next week.  Under B-news
I did that with a sys file entry:

...,alt.sex,!alt.sex.all,alt.sex.bondage,...

and everything worked fine.  Under C-news, alt.sex.bondage doesn't show up.
A quick eyeballing of ngmatch.c made it look like the groupname match with
the largest number of parts is the one that controls the feed (which makes
sense).  But *.all has the same effective length as *.individual and ties
between a yes vote and a no vote are decided in favor of the no vote, so
the group doesn't get through.

I can solve it in the short run with a much larger sys file entry:

...,alt.sex,!alt.sex.masturbation,!alt.sex.bestiality,!alt.sex.carasso,...

which will work until someone creates alt.sex.henry.spencer and it gets
passed on until I get around to changing the sys file to shut it off.  Also,
I'm already running up against awk limits with my sys file entries, and I'd
rather not make them any longer.

Any guesses?

---
Tom Fitzgerald   fitz@wang.com
Wang Labs        ...!uunet!wang!fitz
Lowell MA, USA   1-508-967-5278