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READNEWS(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual READNEWS(7) NAME checknews, readnews - read netnews articles SYNOPSIS readnews [ -a date ] [ -n newsgroup ... ] [ -t title ... ] [ -lprxh- fuM ] [ -c [ command ] ] readnews -s checknews [ ynqve ] [ readnews-options ] DESCRIPTION Readnews prints unread articles that have arrived via the informal, worldwide `netnews' network. Without arguments it prints unread arti- cles from newsgroups to which you subscribe. The options are: -M An interface to Mail(A). A mail(1)-like interface. -c command Articles are written to a temporary `mailbox' and the command (e.g. invoked, with the mailbox in place of A missing command gets something like mail(1). -p Articles are sent to the standard output, no questions asked. -l Titles only. The file will not be updated. -r Print articles in reverse order. -f No followup articles. -h Printed in a briefer format. -u Update file every 5 minutes. -n newsgroup ... Select articles that belong to newsgroups. -t titles Select articles whose titles contain one of the title strings. -a date Select articles that were posted since date; a missing date means the beginning of time. -x Ignore select previously read as well as unread articles. -s Print subscription list. The file or a file specified by environment variable NEWSRC, tells what topics you are interested in and what you have read. If contains a line starting with options (left justified, continued by trailing or if the environment variable NEWSOPTS is present, options are taken from there as well as the command line. In case of conflict, an option on the command line take precedence, followed by and finally NEWSOPTS. Readnews invokes some other programs to perform services. To reply to a news item it uses mail(1) or an alternate in environment parameter MAILER. It paginates with p(1), or an alternate in PAGER. PAGER is a command, perhaps containing as in option -c, or empty for no pagina- tion. The default and mail interfaces support the following commands, and prompt with common alternatives: a newline accepts the first one. For example, proposes yes, no, and quit; newline gets yes. y Yes. Print current article and go on to next. n No. Skip the current article. (In mail interface, it means y.) q Quit; update c Cancel the article. Only the author or the super-user can do this. r Reply. Reply to article's author via mail. You are placed in mail, or an alternate in environment parameter EDITOR, with a header constructed from the article. You may change or add headers. Add your reply after the blank line. Upon exit the message is mailed. rd Reply directly. You are placed in MAILER (mail by default). Type the text of the reply and then control-D. f title Submit a followup article. If you omit the title, readnews gen- erates an appropriate one. You will be placed in your EDITOR to compose the followup. fd Follow up directly. This is like f, but does not construct headers. N newsgroup Go to the named newsgroup, or the next newsgroup if none is named s file Save. Append the article to file. The default is If file is not a full pathname, it is taken relative to HOME, overridden by environment parameter NEWSBOX. If the first character of file is the rest is taken as the name of a program, into which the article is piped. # Report the name and size of the newsgroup. e Erase. Forget that this article was read. h Print a more verbose header. H Print a very verbose, complete header. U Unsubscribe from this newsgroup and go on to the next. d Read a digest. Presents a digest as separate articles. D number Decrypt a Caesar cipher (usually used to obscure off-color mate- rial in The rotation is normally determined line-by-line from character frequencies. If this fails, an explicit number (usu- ally 13) may be given. v Print the current version of the news software. ! Shell escape. number Go to article number. +-n Skip n articles, 1 by default. The articles skipped are recorded as `unread'. - Go back to last article. This is a toggle, typing it twice re- turns you to the original article. x Exit. Like q except that is not updated. X system Transmit article to the named system. A following c, f, fd, r, rd, e, h, H, or s refers to the previous arti- cle: is the normal way to reply to a just-read article when the next one is being offered. Checknews reports whether there is news present, with options: y Report only if news is present (default). n Report only if news is absent. q Turn off reports; nonzero exit status indicates news. v Show the name of the first newsgroup containing unread news. vv Explain any claim of new news, useful if checknews and readnews disagree. e Execute readnews if there is news. EXAMPLES readnews Read all unread articles. readnews -n net.langs.c -a last thursday Print every unread article about C since last Thursday. readnews -p >/dev/null & Discard all unread news: useful after returning from a long trip. readnews -c "ed %" -l Invoke ed(1) on a file containing the titles of all unread arti- cles. FILES /usr/spool/news/newsgroup/number News articles Active newsgroups and numbers of articles Help file for default interface SEE ALSO postnews(7), Mail(A) BUGS Readnews is baroque; many users prefer to browse among the files in alice,research READNEWS(7)