[NNTP] LISTGROUP

Russ Allbery rra at stanford.edu
Mon Apr 25 10:18:12 PDT 2005


Mark Crispin <mrc at CAC.Washington.EDU> writes:
> On Mon, 25 Apr 2005, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:

>> * Still undecided what to do if:
>>  - the range is inverted (e.g. 5-1).

> I'll argue, weakly, that 5-1 should be the same as 1-5.  However, this
> isn't as important in NNTP as it is in IMAP, since you don't have a "*"
> article number in NNTP.

Oh, for the current article number... I see why you might want that.
Alas, that's probably the only way of treating 5-1 that no existing NNTP
software implements.

There is something to be said for it.

> I will, however, argue that if 5-1 is not the same as 1-5, then it
> should be a protocol syntax error and *not* equivalent to 5 or an empty
> range.

Or 5-, which is what INN has always done.  I think that's more common than
treating it as equivalent to 5.

I think the real choices are:

 * Same as 1-5.
 * Empty range.
 * Syntax error.

Everything else makes little logical sense to me.  I'm still leaning
towards the second, treating it as an empty range, and that seemed the
prevailing opinion in news.software.nntp and what the software that
doesn't do what INN does mostly does with it.

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



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