hokey@plus5.UUCP (Hokey) (07/15/84)
I have discovered the undocumented feature in expire which I will call
the "controlling newsgroup" feature. This feature provides for the
disposition of an article under expire based on the first newsgroup
in a list of multiple newsgroups.
When using the -n option of expire, the list of newsgroups goes into
the variable 'ngpat'. Somewhere just after the comment:
/* Nothing after the 2nd tab
in the Big Loop in expire.c there is a line of code which contains:
if (!ngmatch(groupdir, ngpat)) {
This can be found at line 227 in my 2.10.1 expire, and at line 323 in
2.10.2 expire. groupdir contains the FIRST NEWSGROUP in the list from
the line in the history file (with the /article stripped).
So, if you are attempting to use multiple invocations of expire to either
delete or archive selected groups (the last one is where it really hurts,
because your article won't be archived) using the -n option to limit the
list of newsgroups, beware!
Does anybody think this is *really* a feature?
expire, be advised that
--
Hokey ..ihnp4!plus5!hokey
314-725-9492