ietf-nntp LIST NEWSGROUPS

[Russ Allbery]

Ken Murchison <ken at oceana.com> writes:

> I'm about to implement LIST NEWSGROUPS (per draft -18) in the Cyrus
> server, and the text in section 7.6.5 seems confusing/ambiguous.

> The last sentence in the first paragraph seems to hint that an empty
> response means that there are no groups available on the server.
> However, the second paragraph seems to clearly state that a client can
> infer nothing about the presense or absence of a newsgroup in the 215
> response with regards to its availability on the server.

> I would like to think that an empty response means that there are no
> descriptions for the requested newsgroups.

That's a correct interpretation.

> If only a portion of the newsgroups requested by the client have
> descriptions, do I still have to return a line for every newsgroup
> (using dummy descriptions for those without real ones), or can I just
> return a line for those that do?

You should be able to only return lines for the ones that have
descriptions.  That's what existing implementations do.  Whatever wording
implies otherwise should be tweaked.

> In other words, does there have to be a one-to-one correspondence
> between newsgroups in the active "file" and the newsgroups "file"?

No.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>