ietf-nntp LISTGROUP

[greg andruk]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2002 at 11:02:18AM +0000, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
> This is turning into a can of worms that I'd rather not open.

Yep, a note that the inconsistency exists is about all that's practical to
add now.

[Charles]
> > What use are clients likely to use that information for?

The extension originated with nn, which uses the list of article numbers to
expire the nnmaster database.

> And, especially given mandatory streaming, why wouldn't they just do a
> GROUP first ?

LISTGROUP is cute but ugly little hack.  In its original implementation, the
command is a wrapper around the GROUP function.  That's why in nntp 1.5.x we
see the GROUP response line complete with article number summary, and why
the context changes.  GROUP populates the article array by stat'ing the
spool directory, and LISTGROUP is simply a parasite that prints out those
numbers.

nnrpd does it nearly the same way, but mysteriously it goes to the extra
trouble of printing out a response line without the details.

There is a short old news.software.nntp thread about this problem in the
Google archive.

http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=1svpk6INN1gkg%40rs2.hrz.th-darmstadt.de

Grrr.