XPost: news.newusers.questions, news.software.readers 
 From: felan@best.com 
  
 Archive-name: killfile-faq 
 Last modified: 21 Oct 1995 
  
 Copyright 1995, Leanne Phillips. 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. 
  
 Send comments, suggestions, corrections to felan@best.com. 
  
 Questions answered in this post: 
 1. What is a KILL file?  What does it do? 
 2. What's the difference between a 'local' KILL file and a 'global' 
  KILL file? 
 3. How can I change/edit my KILL files? 
 4. What's this 'THRU' line in my KILL file? 
 5. What is the general syntax of a KILL file entry? 
 6. What are the available modifiers and commands? 
 7. How do I kill a specific subject? 
 8. How do I kill postings from a specific person? 
 9. How do I kill articles from a specific site? 
 10. How do I kill followups? 
 11. How do I kill crossposts from a specific group? 
 12. How do I kill all crossposts? 
 13. I know how to kill posts from a specific person. How do I make it so I 
  read _only_ the posts from a specific person? 
 14. How do I kill something if it appears in the article body? 
 15. What's different about trn? 
 16. There's a way in rn to select only the articles I want to read; 
  the /pattern/:=:M method. Is there a way to do that in trn? 
 17. Can I select on a given thread? 
 18. How do I kill a given thread? 
 19. How do I kill the followups to a posting without killing the entire 
  thread? 
 20. How do I kill something in the header that isn't in the subject line? 
 21. Can I kill articles without using a killfile?  If so, how? 
 22. Where can I get more information about killfiles, regular expressions, 
  and trn? 
 23. Comments from the maintainer, and credits 
  
    The KILL file FAQ 
  
 General information 
 =================== 
 1. What is a KILL file?  What does it do? 
  
   A KILL file is a way of recording what articles you want to kill (skip 
 over).  Rn, trn, and strn all support killfiles.  Xrn has some support for 
 killfiles, but the support is limited; nothing in here is guaranteed to work 
 for xrn.  See the xrn man page. 
   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. 
  
 2. 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 killfile for group foo.bar would be, in the News 
 directory, in the subdirectory foo/bar.  It would still be named KILL. 
   (Note: The capitals are important; remember that Unix is case-sensitive.) 
   It is possible to change the locations of your KILL files, by setting 
 the environment variables KILLGLOBAL and KILLLOCAL.  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(1) or trn(1) 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. 
  
 3. How can I change/edit my KILL files? 
  
   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).  It will be added automatically.  The subject 
 that is added will be some of what shows up in the Subject: line, so 
 there isn't much flexibility in it.  (What is actually added is the first 
 twenty or so characters of the Subject: line, not the whole line.) 
  
   Assuming you know how to use an editor and have made that editor your 
 default (again, see local support staff if you don't know how to do that), 
 you can edit the KILL file directly, using the appropriate name as 
 described above. 
  
   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 
 being asked to pick a newsgroup, type control-k; this will start your 
 default editor, using your global killfile.  When you're reading a 
 particular newsgroup, typing control-k will start the editor with the 
 local killfile for that group.  If it doesn't exist, it will create it; 
 if necessary, it will also create the directories in the path to it. 
  
 4. What's this 'THRU' line in my KILL file? 
  
   The THRU line, at the top of every local KILL file, indicates how many 
 articles have been processed by the KILL file.  It's the number of the 
 article it last processed.  No articles before that number will be 
 looked at by the KILL file again, even if you add an entry to the KILL 
 file.  You need to change the THRU line as well. 
  
 Rn and trn 
 ========== 
 5. What is the general syntax of a KILL file entry? 
   The general style for building a kill line is: 
  
   /pattern/modifiers:command 
  
   The  is the pattern to use to pick articles.  This is a regular 
 expression, like those used in grep.  You can use any case in the pattern; 
 t won't matter, unless you use a modifier to make rn case-sensitive. 
   The  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. 
 This is usually either to kill it or to mark it unread. 
  
   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.  (See below for the explanation of j and =.) 
  
 6. What are the available modifiers and commands? 
  
  
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