[comp.sources.d] Program to make a list of subjects and filenames from news

ken@rochester.ARPA (SKY) (12/23/86)

I don't know of any way to get the subject from the tape short of
reading the tape, but here is a useful tip: mh can be used to read news
articles.

For example, to scan the directory all you have to say is "scan
+/usr/spool/news/...". If you don't like typing in the long pathname,
then make a symbolic link to your mail directory.  For instance, I have
~/Mail/modsources -> /usr/spool/news/mod/sources.

	Ken

paula@bcsaic.UUCP (Paul Allen) (01/06/87)

Some time ago, I wrote a little program that reads a tar tape and
(assuming that it is a news archive tape) writes a list of subjects and
filenames to stdout.  There is probably a better way to do this, but my
program sure is handy!  By using big buffers and skipping over big
files, it runs pretty fast.  I store the list of subjects in a file
whose name contains the date of the archive.  Thus, I can grep for all
references to bluplefritz and get the subject text, the file name on the
tape, and the date of the archive tape I need to mount.

Without this program, it would be painful to try to find something on
the news backup tapes.  I am a packrat, and I needed an easy way to find
stuff.  If enough people are interested in the program, I will post it
to net.sources.

Paul Allen

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