Rec.Juggling News Service

Overview

To use any of the commands that make up this service, send an E-mail message to news-service@juggling.org. The Subject of the message is ignored.

In the body, you may put one or more of the following commands.

	# lines starting with a # are ignored
	# white space at the beginning and ends of lines is ignored

	# set your return E-mail address, usually not needed
	PATH enrico@rastelli.org

	# get the instructions
	HELP

	# fetch a handy Unix program for interacting with this service
	PROG

	# retrieve a rec.juggling post
	# WARNING:  Message-Id's are case sensitive.
	#           Do *not* alter upper/lower case.
	SEND 2tdem1$su9@hijinks.hal.COM

	# fetch index of JIS posts
	FROM jis@juggling.org

	# use the SHOW command to separate multiple searchss
	SHOW

	# fetch index of posts on multiplex juggling
	SUBJ multiplex

	# show command not needed after last search

	--
	all lines following one starting with two hyphens are ignored
	.signature goes here

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Command Summary

PATH address

The PATH command sets your return E-mail address, and if used, it must be the first command of your message. By default, the server will attempt to reply to your mail by looking at the header of the received message, like "reply" does in most mailers. If you use this command, however, it will instead send mail to the given address. For most people, the PATH command is not needed.

Example: PATH enrico@rastelli.org

HELP

Sends this text.

Example: HELP

PROG

Sends a copy of a Unix shell program that makes it even easier to perform searches and make message retrievals, using a simple command line interface that does the mailing for you.

Example: PROG

SEND message-id

Sends the rec.juggling news message with the specified Message-Id. You may retrieve as many messages as you like, by using a separate SEND command for each.

WARNING: Message-Id's are case sensitive. Do not alter upper/lower case.

Example: SEND 2tdem1$su9@hijinks.hal.COM

Performing Searches

• Select all postings by a certain user or from a certain site by entering their name as it appears in the From field:

  FROM bakalor

  FROM jis@juggling

  FROM juggling.org

• Select messages on bounce juggling or cigar box manipulation:

  SUBJ bounce

  SUBJ cigar

• Select messages posted in 1994 with "fest" in the Subject field:

  DATE 1994
  SUBJ fest

• Select messages matching the regular expression "mill.*mess" to get postings on the Mills Mess in its many variant spellings:

  SEARCH regexp
  SUBJ mill.*mess

• Select the 100 most recently posted messages:

  COUNT 100
  ORDER rev

Search Commands

FROM value

The specified value can be any string you might expect to find in a From message header line. It could be part of a person's name or E-mail address. Using this variable will limit your searches to messages whose From header matches your specified value.

Example: FROM jis@juggling.org

SUBJ value

Searches on the Subject field allow you to easily find messages on a given topic. Generally, shorter strings are more likely to match properly, so for example, use "bounce", "ring", or "cigar" to search for messages on bounce juggling, ring juggling, or cigar box manipulation.

The specified value can be any string you might expect to find in a Subject message header line. Using this variable will limit your searches to messages whose Subject header matches your specified value.

Example: SUBJ fest

DATE value

The specified value is generally a 4, 6, or 8 digit string representing a date in YYYYMMDD format. All of the Date message header lines have had their dates converted to this format for the purpose of this search, after first adjusting them to GMT. A 4 digit value, such as "DATE 1993", will limit your search to messages posted in 1993. A 6 digit value, such as "DATE 199401", would limit your search to messages posted in January 1994. Using all 8 digits, such as "DATE 19911112", would only report matching messages posted on November 12, 1991, GMT.

Example: DATE 1994

COUNT value

You may limit the number of matches returned by specifying a nonzero value for "COUNT". Zero indicates there is to be no such limit, and all matches found should be returned, however a practical limit of 500 is always enforced. Using "COUNT 20" will limit your report to the first 20 matches found. Normally, if sorted by date in forward order, this would be the 20 oldest matches.

Example: COUNT 50

SORTBY value

Normally the matches found will be reported back in the order in which they were posted, by date. Specifying "SORTBY subj" or "SORTBY from" will change the order of the report to be sorted by the Subject or From lines of the messages.

Example: SORTBY subj

ORDER value

Normally the matches found will be reported back after being sorted in increasing order. Specifying "ORDER rev" will cause the report to be returned in reverse order. For example, to view the 100 most recently posted messages, use:

COUNT 100
ORDER rev

Example: ORDER rev

CASE value

Normally all searches of "from" and "subj" values are done case insensitive, so specifying "Ball" would match either "ball" or "BALL". Specifying "CASE sen" makes the searches case sensitive, and only exact matches will be made. There is usually little need to do this.

Example: CASE sen

SEARCH value

Normally all searches of the From, Subject, and Date fields are done by simple string matching. Specifying "SEARCH regexp" allows regular expressions to be specified for pattern matching. Thus you could search the subject field for variant spellings of "Mills Mess" using the regular expression "mill.*mess".

Example: SEARCH regexp

SHOW

Starts a search using the values specified, and then resets those values to allow for additional searches. This is only needed if more than one search is requested from a single message, and is not required at the end of the last search.

To generate 2 searches for all messages posted on each of 2 days, you could use:

DATE 19940101
SHOW
DATE 19940202

Example: SHOW

Rec.juggling Command for Unix

You may retrieve a copy through this service by sending the PROG command.