How do I get RFC articles?

[Dan_Jacobson at ATT.COM]

here's a handy script:

ftp=ftp #it might be called someting funny on your system -DJ
#From: sahayman at iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Steve Hayman)
#Newsgroups: alt.sources
#Subject: retrieve RFC's automatically from uunet
#Date: 11 Apr 91 22:22:30 GMT
#Organization: Computer Science, Indiana University
#
#I find this little script handy, it retrieves RFC's automatically
#from uunet via anonymous ftp and sticks them on stdout.
#So, instead of keeping your own little collection of RFCs
#hidden away somewhere and forgetting what directory you
#put them in, you can just use
#
#% rfc index | more
#% rfc 1217 | lpr	(A personal favourite. Get this one. It's funny.)

#!/bin/sh
# rfc NNN
# retrieve rfc NNN from uunet, put it on stdout
# assumes rfc's are in uunet:/rfc/rfcNNNN.Z
#
# Actually the uunet people would prefer it if you ftp'd things
# from 'ftp.uu.net', so we retrieve things from that machine.
#
# uunet conveniently has files called "index" and "rfc-index"
# in the /rfc directory, so this script will also let you
# retrieve those.
#
# sahayman
# 1991 04 10


PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/ucb:/bin:usr/bin export PATH

# a little hack so that we can say "rfc index" or "rfc rfc-index"
# as well as "rfc 822"

case "$1" in
"")		echo "$0: Usage $0 [NNN] [index] [rfc-index]" 1>&2; exit 1 ;;
[0123456789]*)	file=rfc$1.Z ;;
*)		file=$1.Z ;;
esac

${ftp?} -n ftp.uu.net <<EOF
user anonymous $USER@`hostname`
binary
get rfc/$file "|uncompress -c"
EOF