.\" =()<.ds a @<NEWSARTS>@>()=
.ds a /var/spool/news
.\" =()<.ds b @<NEWSBIN>@>()=
.ds b /usr/local/newsbin
.\" =()<.ds c @<NEWSCTL>@>()=
.ds c /usr/local/lib/news
.\" =()<.ds m @<NEWSMASTER>@>()=
.ds m usenet
.TH NEWSAUX 8 "13 April 1992"
.BY "C News"
.SH NAME
spacefor \- check available space for news
.br
queuelen \- get length of outbound-news uucp queues
.br
sizeof \- get size of file(s) for news
.br
ctime, getdate, getabsdate \- convert dates to and from internal representation for news
.br
newshostname \- get host name for news
.br
gngp \- search text using a newsgroup pattern
.br
canonhdr \- extract header and canonicalize
.br
newslock \- do locking for news
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B \*b/spacefor
filesize location [ site ]
.br
.B \*b/queuelen
site
.br
.B \*b/sizeof
[
.B \-i
]
file ...
.br
.B \*b/ctime
[
.B \-u
]
decimaldate
.br
.B \*b/getdate
printabledate
.br
.B \*b/getabsdate
absolute-printable-date
.br
.B \*b/newshostname
.br
.B \*b/gngp
[
.B \-arv
]
ngpattern file ...
.br
.B \*b/canonhdr
[
.B \-dm
]
[ file ] ...
.br
.B \*b/newslock
locktemp lockname
.SH DESCRIPTION
These programs are minor utilities used by various parts of C News.
.PP
.I Spacefor
determines how many files of size \fIfilesize\fR can fit in \fIlocation\fR
(\fBincoming\fR, \fBarticles\fR, \fBcontrol\fR, \fBarchive\fR,
or \fBoutbound\fR to \fIsite\fR)
without cramping things unduly.
The precise locations of these places, and how low space gets before
it is unduly cramped, are site-specific.
.I Spacefor
invokes \fIdf\fR(1) or the equivalent system call
to determine the available space.
.PP
.I Queuelen
reports how many news batches \fIuucp\fR has queued up for \fIsite\fR.
.PP
.I Sizeof
reports the total number of bytes in the \fIfile\fR(s).
(This may seem redundant with \fIls\ \-l\fR, but the format of \fIls\ \-l\fR
varies between systems and \fIsizeof\fR looks after all that.)
Nonexistent files are silently ignored.
If the
.B \-i
option is given,
.I sizeof
prints one line per (existing) file, with name and size,
and does not print the total.
.PP
.IR Ctime ,
.I getdate
and
.I getabsdate
convert dates in human-readable form
to
.RI ( getdate
and
.IR getabsdate )
and from (\fIctime\fR) decimal ASCII representations
of Unix's internal integer dates.
Their functionality resembles that of their namesakes in the C library.
.I getabsdate
parses only absolute dates,
not relative dates.
Both
.I ctime
and
.I getdate
recognise the argument
.B now
to mean the current time.
Under
.BR \-u ,
.I ctime
will print GMT instead of local time.
.PP
.I Newshostname
reports the name of this system for news purposes.
This may differ from the name of the particular CPU it is run on;
a cluster of CPUs sharing a filesystem tree would all have the same
\fInewshostname\fR name.
Typically \fInewshostname\fR gets the name from \fI\*c/whoami\fR;
failing that, it consults various other possible sources
(e.g. the \fIhostname\fR command).
.PP
.I Gngp
resembles \fIgrep\fR except that its search is based on newsgroup patterns
(e.g. `comp', which matches `comp', `comp.lang', `comp.lang.c', ...;
`comp,!comp.lang.c' which matches `comp' and `comp.lang' but not
`comp.lang.c'; etc.).
\fIGngp\fR prints only the line(s) that
contain a substring that matches the \fIngpattern\fR.
Normally the substring must run from a point in the line to its end.
If the
\fB\-a\fR
flag is given,
the eligible substrings start at the beginning of the
line and end at white space or the end of the line.
The
.B -v
option prints only lines that do
.I not
match.
The
\fB\-r\fR flag reverses the inputs, with patterns coming from
the file and the argument taken as the line(s).
.PP
.I Canonhdr
takes the concatenation of its input \fIfile\fR(s) (standard input if none)
as an article,
and outputs the header from the article with header keywords canonicalized
for easier processing.
Canonicalization forces all alphabetics to lower case except the first
letter of each (hyphen-separated) word in the keyword,
which is forced to upper case.
(One exception:
``Message-ID'' is the canonical form of [e.g.] ``message-id''.)
Under
.BR \-d ,
.I canonhdr
will also canonicalise dates in
.B Date:
and
.B Expires:
headers.
Under
.BR \-m ,
it will accept RFC 822 headers
and rewrite them as RFC 1036 headers.
.PP
.I Newslock
makes a link named \fIlockname\fR to the file \fIlocktemp\fR,
and returns exit status 0 for success, 1 if the link could not be made
(typically because \fIlockname\fR already existed).
This is used for shell-file locking in C News.
It is a subset of \fIln\fR(1) except that (a) no error messages are
ever produced and (b) the link is guaranteed to fail if \fIlockname\fR
already exists.
(Some brain-damaged versions of \fIln\fR helpfully remove \fIlockname\fR
in that case, making them useless for locking.)
.SH FILES
.ta 6c
.nf
/usr/spool/uucp/*	uucp queues
\*c/whoami	news host name
\*c/L.*	lock temporaries
\*c/LOCK*	lock files
.SH SEE ALSO
df(1), uucp(1), ls(1), ctime(3), getdate(3), hostname(1),
grep(1), news(5), expire(8), newsbatch(8), rnews(8), newsmaint(8)
.SH HISTORY
Written at U of Toronto by Henry Spencer and Geoff Collyer.
.SH BUGS
.I Spacefor
and
.I queuelen
are unfortunately somewhat system-specific, since \fIdf\fR output and
\fIuucp\fR file layout vary between different versions.
(Using system calls in
.I spacefor
doesn't help, as the system calls differ too.)
.PP
.I Queuelen
probably ought to count bytes rather than batches, but that would make
its system-dependency even worse.
.PP
The need for \fIsizeof\fR and \fInewslock\fR is a botch.