[net.news] Inf. loop in readnews?

lipkis (04/30/83)

One of the non-default things I most often want to do with readnews is
to look again at some article I read during the current session.  The
only reasonable way to do this is (assuming the article is in
the last 2 days of news for newsgroup net.xyz is:

	readnews -x -n net.xyz -a yesterday

Every time I've tried this I get no response from readnews before I get
bored with waiting -- I end up going into .newsrc and editing the line
that says what articles I've read in net.xyz.  This is yechhy!

What gives?  Is readnews in an infinite loop, or have I tricked it into
some sort of exponential algorithm (with Unix software, you never know).
In either case, is there a better way than fooling around manually with
readnews' database?

(Please reply to: ...!cmcl2!acf2!condict ,  NOT this message address)

Michael Condict
Courant Inst.
New York U.

dmmartindale (05/03/83)

If you do "readnews -x", it takes a LONG time to figure out what the first
article actually present on the machine is.  Try "readnews -xr" instead,
and it will start at the most recent article (which is probably closer to
what you wanted).