ietf-nntp new draft of base document available

[Charles Lindsey]

In <yld7k9vppk.fsf at windlord.stanford.edu> Russ Allbery <rra at stanford.edu> writes:

>Any wildmat expression whose first pattern begins with ! is treated as if
>an implicit "*," were appended to the beginning of the pattern.

>(I'd use prepended here, but the OED claims this is not an appropriate use
>of that term, and gives a definition of append that allows this usage.
>Interesting.)

There are times when the OED is best ignored :-( .

>Does the addition of the above sentence fully clarify it?

Not on its own.

I think what the spec needs to say is that you do a left-to-right scan of
the comma-separated list of wildmats, constructing a set of newsgroups as
you go along. A '!' wildmat then removes from the set. Assume "*" at the
beginning if it starts with a '!'. That is my gut feel of what INN is
observed to do, but that needs confirmation from someone who understands
the code.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Email:     chl at clw.cs.man.ac.uk  Web:   http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Voice/Fax: +44 161 437 4506      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9     Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7  65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5