[net.news.b] possible bug in readnews

msc@qubix.UUCP (06/04/83)

	I have noticed a peculiar happening with 2.10 readnews.  I tried to
	go back and read an old item (read 10 minutes earlier) from
	newsgroup junk using the command

		readnews -n junk -x -a "last sunday"

	and it said "No news".  I tried the same thing with newsgroup
	test and got the same result.  The same command however worked with
	the newsgroups general and with net.general.

	The only similarities/differences between these groups is that
	the names test and junk are only 4 characters long and they have
	only 2 and 1 articles respectively in their directories whereas
	the other names are longer and there are at least 6 articles
	in their directories.

	I plan to ivestigate this further.  In the meantime if anyone else
	has noticed this, please let me know.

				Mark

alb@alice.UUCP (06/05/83)

It is a bug resulting from an undocumented feature.  If you are to
read the groups test, junk, and/or control, you must specifically
subscribe to them in your .newsrc (i.e.
options -n all
is not enough; you need
options -n all test junk control
)  The bug in readnews is that you must say it twice on the
command line:
	readnews -n junk junk