[news.software.anu-news] Arbitron wanted

ed@iitmax.IIT.EDU (Ed Federmeyer) (11/23/89)

There is a program called (I think) "Arbitron" for Unix machines that
runs through all the user's directories and checks to see if they
read USENET news, and which newsgroups they subscribe to, and counts
them all up, and produces a nice report of these improtant statistics.

Is there a simmiar program for use with ANU-NEWS and a VAX/VMS system?

If there is, please let me know where I can FTP it from, or perhaps someone
in net-land could arrange to Email it to me...

Thanks!  Ed Federmeyer

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FAC2@dayton.saic.com (Earle Ake) (11/23/89)

In article <3023@iitmax.IIT.EDU>, ed@iitmax.IIT.EDU (Ed Federmeyer) writes:
> There is a program called (I think) "Arbitron" for Unix machines that
> runs through all the user's directories and checks to see if they
> read USENET news, and which newsgroups they subscribe to, and counts
> them all up, and produces a nice report of these improtant statistics.
> 
> Is there a simmiar program for use with ANU-NEWS and a VAX/VMS system?

	I tried to rewrite the arbitron program for VMS but I ran into a
few problems.  First, the arbitron is implemented as a UNIX shell script.  Not
an easy thing to follow.  Second, it relies on the user having their newsrc
file in their root level directory.  Mine is in a subdirectory with a logical
name assigned to it.  Do we search through everyone's login.com to find the
string NEWSRC?  And we also need to read the sysuaf file to see where each
person's login directory is.  If anyone wants to try to implement it under
VMS, I have the script and an example output from the program.  I have
already send this to someone else that requested it but I haven't seen anything
from him.  I can also give you what I had started.

-- 
_____________________________________________________________________________
             ____ ____    ___
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           ____//   / / /__                 Dayton, Ohio
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gih900@UUNET.UU.NET (Geoff Huston) (11/24/89)

>There is a program called (I think) "Arbitron" for Unix machines that
>runs through all the user's directories and checks to see if they
>read USENET news, and which newsgroups they subscribe to, and counts
>them all up, and produces a nice report of these improtant statistics.
>
>Is there a simmiar program for use with ANU-NEWS and a VAX/VMS system?
     
Not as such - certainly a similar type of program could scan the NEWSRC files
of each local user, and the content of the unix and VMS newsrc files are
similar in both format and semantics, but the differences are such that the
arbitron program would require work to understand the VMS newsrc format.
     
>If there is, please let me know where I can FTP it from, or perhaps someone
>in net-land could arrange to Email it to me...
     
who wants to do the port??
     
Geoff Huston

gih900@UUNET.UU.NET (Geoff Huston) (11/25/89)

>        I tried to rewrite the arbitron program for VMS but I ran into a
>few problems.  First, the arbitron is implemented as a UNIX shell script.  Not
>an easy thing to follow.  Second, it relies on the user having their newsrc
>file in their root level directory.  Mine is in a subdirectory with a logical
>name assigned to it.  Do we search through everyone's login.com to find the
>string NEWSRC?  And we also need to read the sysuaf file to see where each
>person's login directory is.  If anyone wants to try to implement it under
>VMS, I have the script and an example output from the program.  I have
>already send this to someone else that requested it but I haven't seen anything
>from him.  I can also give you what I had started.
     
     
Mail me where you have got to, and I'll see what I can do.
     
Geoff Huston
gih900@csc.anu.oz.au