[comp.mail.elm] Making a newsgroup into a folder

wisdom@CS.UWindsor.Ca (CSS Newsletter) (01/22/91)

A simple query; what am I doing wrong?

All I really want to be able to do (for example) is:
  cd /usr/spool/news/comp/mail/elm
  cat * >~/Mail/cm-elm
  elm -f =cm-elm

And read Usenet groups THAT way! Sort by subject, and **poof**, who NEEDS
 trn!

Unfortunately, when I do this, I get 

  Folder is corrupt!! I can't read it!!

However, if I (using Vnews) extract msgs out, then cat them together, every-
 thing works just fine.

The only difference I can find is that, the msgs that DO work in folders, start
 with a FROM line, with no colon, but with the date appended to the line.
 
So my simple question, to those of you with more awk and related skills out 
 there is HOW? How do I stick this line in to the beginning of each msg? Or is
 there some OTHER way of getting around it? Am I gonna hafta write a C program
 to add one lousy line to every message and build the folder? (That's within
 my abilities; an AWK script/one-liner isn't). No, Perl isn't up and running
 here either.

-- Pete Smith

chris@vision.UUCP (Chris Davies) (01/26/91)

In article <339@schoenfinkel.CS.UWindsor.Ca> wisdom@CS.UWindsor.Ca (CSS Newsletter) writes:
>All I really want to be able to do (for example) is:
>  cd /usr/spool/news/comp/mail/elm
>  cat * >~/Mail/cm-elm
>  elm -f =cm-elm
>And read Usenet groups THAT way! [...]

I would consider piping each message into rmail (/bin/rmail on this SysV.3
machine).  You would then need some way of persuading mail to drop such
messages into your required folder.  If "filter" can tell that a particular
header exists you could look for the "Path: ..." line.

Try this (bourne) shell script for starters (don't forget to change "chris"
to your own username  :-) ...
	:
	cd /usr/spool/news/comp/mail/elm
	for f in *
	do
		cat $f | rmail chris
	done

Chris
-- 
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bhoule@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Bill Houle) (01/29/91)

In article <339@schoenfinkel.CS.UWindsor.Ca> wisdom@CS.UWindsor.Ca (CSS Newsletter) writes:
>All I really want to be able to do (for example) is:
>  cd /usr/spool/news/comp/mail/elm
>  cat * >~/Mail/cm-elm
>  elm -f =cm-elm
>And read Usenet groups THAT way! [...]

In <1398@vision.UUCP> chris@vision.UUCP (Chris Davies) writes:
>I would consider piping each message into rmail (/bin/rmail on this SysV.3
>machine).  You would then need some way of persuading mail to drop such
>messages into your required folder.

Or something like the following could be done:

	for f in *
	do
	  news-to-mail $f ~/Mail/cm-elm
	done

where 'news-to-mail' is a script like so:

	#!/bin/sh
	#
	# $1 == news article
	# $2 == mail folder
	#
	ex - $1 >/dev/null << E*O*F
	/^Date:
	ya
	?^Path:
	pu
	-
	j
	g/^Path:/s/Date: //g
	g/^Path:/s//From/g
	w! >> $2
	q
	E*O*F

The only reason to do it this way would be if rmail is a hog as
compared to ex or sed or whatever header mangler is used.

Note that the date will come out screwy under Elm; this is because
the Date header in news is "day month yr" and mail uses "dow month
day year".  Small price to pay.

--
Bill Houle                       bhoule@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM
NCR NPD-San Diego                (619) 693-5593