This is from one listowner's viewpoint (the one that started all this).
 
Some listowners of larger lists sometimes, maybe not often, but definitely
from time to time, need to change the sub options of a fairly significant
portion of the subs while leaving the others untouched.  Generally this
will come about when installing a feature previously unused by the list
in question (and thank you, Eric, for all of the things you have given us
to work with).  For example, you decide you want to install Renewal, but
you want it to apply only to those subs set nomail.  That means you need
a list of the nomail subs.
 
If the coding in the list were readily understandable, or a translation
table were available, the easiest way to do this would be to work from
the list itself, which has been gotten with nolock.  Given that the coding
isn't all that transparent, one is left with query and scan.  Scan gives
output which can be quickly edited into a list or just addresses (which is
what is wanted) but you can't check options with it.  The new "with"
option for query is great.  The problem is the output, newly designed
so the subscriber can, maybe, easily understand it (of course, three
quarters of them never use it, they ask the listowner) is a real pain
for the listowner.  Each entry is about a screen in length.  If you
are working with an output of 1,302 subscribers, about a third of your
list, which is what I'm currently doing, it is not a great deal of fun
to extract the addresses from the "query with" output so you can be
sure you change only those subscriptions which you want changed to meet
the new setup.
 
Here's the proposal part.  Maybe change query so that listowners, when
using "with", can have the option of getting the output as only address
and name, and maybe another option so the output is simply the addresses.
If we are using "with" we don't, most of the time, really want to see
the rest of the option settings for each of the subscriptions.
 
Or, enable scan to search for options rather than names and addresses,
when we use a special option.  The output of scan is fairly easy to
compile a special list from.
 
What we, or at least I, want is sort of an amalgam of "query with"
and scan.  I don't care whether scan is modified, or query is modified
(and I'ld probably be satisfied if you kept the "with" option and
just gave us back the option of the old style output when we want it)
or an all new command is created.
 
Just something, so that when we need it (or even just think we need it)
we can get a simple listing of all the subscribers whose options are set
a particular way.  If we've got something like that we don't need to bug
you about an explanation of the code.
 
So, can you think about that? Can you give us something of that sort?
You might not see why we want something like that, but a lot of us can.
And this sort of thing comes up about every year and a half, which sort
of indicates it ain't going to go away.
 
Douglas