www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/killfile-faq/faq.html -> www.faqs.org/faqs/killfile-faq/
Permission is granted to distribute this document for personal use, as long as this copyright notice maintains. Publication of this material in printed form is forbidden without express permission of the author. Summary of changes: Oct 21: Added a caution and correct to question 15 about from line killing. What's the difference between a 'local' KILL file and a 'global' KILL file? How do I make it so I read _only_ the posts from a specific person? How do I kill something if it appears in the article body? There's a way in rn to select only the articles I want to read; How do I kill the followups to a posting without killing the entire thread? How do I kill something in the header that isn't in the subject line? Where can I get more information about killfiles, regular expressions, and trn? Comments from the maintainer, and credits The KILL file FAQ General information =================== 1. A KILL file is a way of recording what articles you want to kill (skip over). Xrn has some support for killfiles, but the support is limited; To kill articles, you specify criteria to use to kill them: a subject line, a part of a subject line, articles from one poster or one site, cross- posted articles, or follow-ups to other articles. You can also kill articles with a particular string in the article. What's the difference between a 'local' KILL file and a 'global' KILL file? The 'global' KILL file - there is only one for each user - is applied to each newsgroup. A 'local' KILL file is applied to only one newsgroup, the one for which it is named. The global KILL file is typically in your News directory, under the name 'KILL'. Local KILL files are typically in the News directory, with more involved names. The most popular method is to put all the files in one directory using the group name as the file name: KILLLOCAL="%p/Kill/%C" KILLGLOBAL="%p/Kill/Global" Where %p is the news dir (/News) and %C is the name of the group. The global kill file is in the same directory with the name "Global". See your rn or trn man pages, or local support staff, for help with this if you want to use something else. A word of warning about global kill files: they slow down killfile processing, so you have to wait longer to start reading - for each newsgroup. If you don't need to put something in a global file, you shouldn't. The easiest way to add a given subject to your KILL file is to start reading the first article with that subject, and then to type 'K' (the capital is important). The subject that is added will be some of what shows up in the Subject: line, so there isn't much flexibility in it. From within rn and trn, you can add something to a killfile when typing in the kill command interactively (see below, the question about killing without using a killfile). Use the K modifier in any command (see below for explanations of modifiers). You can also start editing your KILL files from within rn and trn. When you're reading a particular newsgroup, typing control-k will start the editor with the local killfile for that group. The THRU line, at the top of every local KILL file, indicates how many articles have been processed by the KILL file. No articles before that number will be looked at by the KILL file again, even if you add an entry to the KILL file. The general style for building a kill line is: /pattern/modifiers:command The <pattern> is the pattern to use to pick articles. The <modifiers> tell rn where to look for the pattern - the subject (default), one of the other header lines, or the entire article, as examples of the usual modifiers used. The command tells what to do with the article once it's been selected. If no modifier appears before the colon, only the subject line of the article is searched. More than one command can be performed by using the style: /pattern/modifier:command:command Thus, for instance, you can use j and = together to see the exact subject lines being killed. The easiest way to kill a subject line is to kill it from within the newsgroup. When the subject line comes up that you want to kill, instead of using 'n' to skip that article or 'k' to kill the subject for that session, type 'K'. The subject line will then be entered into your KILL file for that group. If you want to put that line into your global KILL file, you'll have to do that yourself. To kill a general subject, ie any 'test' messages, put in the pattern: /test/:j This will kill anything with the word 'test' in the subject line. To kill articles from a single poster, you need to know the userid and nodename of the poster; To kill anything that is a followup to any article, use this pattern: /Re:/:j This kills anything with 'Re:' in it. The other elements of this line are part of the regular expression meta-language; How do I make it so I read _only_ the posts from a specific person? Now, after your normal kills, you might suddenly find out that you killed articles from someone whose posts you want to read even if they write about subjects you don't want to read. You can substitute m for j any time you need to, in any of the commands already discussed. In fact, you can kill everything in a newsgroup and only read what you want to read by using the 'm' feature, and putting this line at the top of your KILL file: /^/:j This method has a problem, though. Specifically, it marks even those you've already read (really read, not just marked as read) as unread. So, there's another way to do it: /pattern/:=:M (check the rn man page for the M command). This lists all the subjects of the new articles, and then gives those articles to the M command. How do I kill something if it appears in the article body? Use the a modifier to pick the pattern and kill it: /<pattern>/a:j Trn === 15. Trn, being a threaded version of rn, has a few extra enhancements to deal with those. Because rn is no longer being improved, there are also extensions that have been made that could, but are not, be integrated into the base rn killfiles. One of the additions to trn is the f modifier, meaning the From: line. This line gets used so much it seemed appropriate to add a modifier in specifically for it. However, the f' modifier *may* not work exactly in the same manner as the subject-based criteria if trn is configured to use thread files. Specifically, if thread files are used only the 'Real Name' portion of the from line can be guaranteed to be matched. There's a way in rn to select only the articles I want to read; Just type 'T+' while reading any thread or while selecting a thread in the selector (it's similar to using 'K' on an article, except it selects).
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