michaelr@elecvax.OZ (Michael Rourke) (06/15/84)
I have implemented my own news software, and thought it would be nice to be able to unsubscribe from particular followups using the "References:" fields. Mark Horton's article "Standard for Interchange of USENET Messages" defines how the "References:" field should be generated. Trouble is most news software around gets it wrong! This is most annoying. To illustrate I have collected some headers from a particular discussion: The first two seem OK (I don't have the original article): From: merlyn@sequent.UUCP Subject: Re: Ethernet addressing (and destroying dollar bills) Message-ID: <515@sequent.UUCP> References: <1329@uvacs.UUCP> <1429@cbosgd.UUCP> From: faunt@saturn.UUCP Subject: Re: Ethernet addressing Message-ID: <2138@saturn.UUCP> References: <1329@uvacs.UUCP> <1429@cbosgd.UUCP> This is wrong: From: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP Subject: Re: Ethernet addressing (and destroying dollar bills) Message-ID: <2678@ecsvax.UUCP> References: sequent.515 Not only is the reference field the wrong format, but the software didn't copy the previous references field from the message. This is interesting too: From: jaap@haring.UUCP Subject: Re: Ethernet addressing Message-ID: <260@haring.UUCP> References: <999@hao.UUCP> Wrong again (at least the field format is correct): From: ed@mtxinu.UUCP Subject: Re: Ethernet addressing (and destroying dollar bills) Message-ID: <128@mtxinu.UUCP> References: <515@sequent.UUCP> And now we have a comma in there: (again non-standard) From: karn@mouton.UUCP Subject: Re: Ethernet addressing (and destroying dollar bills) Message-ID: <76@mouton.UUCP> References: sequent.515, <2678@ecsvax.UUCP> <651@pyuxhh.UUCP> And so on.... From: kurt@pyuxhh.UUCP Subject: Re: Ethernet addressing (and destroying dollar bills) Message-ID: <651@pyuxhh.UUCP> References: sequent.515, <2678@ecsvax.UUCP> From: rpw3@fortune.UUCP Subject: Re: Ethernet addressing - (nf) Message-ID: <3564@fortune.UUCP> This one is correct - we generated it here: From: dave@elecvax.SUN (Dave Horsfall) Subject: Re: Ethernet addressing Message-ID: <232@elecvax.SUN> References: <1329@uvacs.UUCP> <1429@cbosgd.UUCP> <2138@saturn.UUCP> I don't expect everybody to rush out and fix their source(s), but it would be nice if further releases of the news software: 1. provided an "unsubscribe from followups" command 2. generated the References: field as per the standard Ways of filtering large volumes of news are useful. Michael Rourke Department of Computer Science University of New South Wales, Australia ..(decvax,vax135,sfjec)!mulga!michaelr:elecvax
mp@whuxle.UUCP (Mark Plotnick) (06/22/84)
Here are some fixes for the bogus References lines. - In followup_command (and reply_command), change the code that concatenates ", " to use " " instead. - the code in hbufcp is kind of old, and doesn't copy the followid field. So, when a user does an f- command (the usual state of affairs), there's no References line to be found in the followed-up-to article! Hbufcp should really do a structure copy (except for the unrec fields). - the code in followup_command (and reply_command) blindly does lots of strcats without looking to see whether it's overflowing folbuf. If the References line gets too long, folbuf won't be null-terminated, and the string starting at folbuf will continue into the subj array (on a vax, at least). That's why you'll sometimes see "Subject:" near the end of a References line. The fix is to either have the code do strncats or else just make folbuf[] immensely huge. - the illegal Message-IDs are probably a result of the pre-2.10 news systems that are still on the net. Mark Plotnick