readnews bug yielding "line too long" message

[Larry Wall]

In article <635 at hou5a.UUCP> hbb at hou5a.UUCP (H.B.Braude) writes:
> The way to fix this on the user level is to grep(1) the offending
> line from the original .newsrc file and find out the last article
> value. Then create a temporary file  containing  "newsgroup.name:
> 1-value."   Next, split(1)  the  .newsrc file  so  that each file
> is a single line.  Then the file with the oversized entry can  be
> replaced  with  the one  previously prepared. Finally, reassemble
> the .newsrc file using cat(1) (eg: split(1) names files xaa, xab,
> etc. To reassemble the file, just "cat x?? > .newsrc."  Perhaps a
> safer method would be to work on a copy of the .newsrc file, just
> in case.


An easier way to fix the line, if you happen to have rn on your system,
is to start up rn, find the newsgroup, catch up ('c') in it, and exit.
Rn doesn't care how long the lines are in the .newsrc as long as you
have memory.

Larry Wall
{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!lwall