On Fri, 3 Jul 1992 21:48:33 PDT Richard Childers <[log in to unmask]>
said:
 
>I can't believe that it would be that hard to write a shell script under
>Unix that  would emulate the  ( strictly  finite ) number  of operations
>that LISTSERV  supports (...)  Write the  script to  read the  file once
>every so often, read each message,  act appropriately, zero the file and
>split. Add some mechanisms to keep the script from zeroing the file when
>it's being  accessed by the mail  delivery agent. You're done.  Once the
>script  works, turn  it into  a *simple*  C program.  Runs faster,  less
>likely  to crash.  (...)  The  actual implimentation  of  a LISTSERV  is
>trivial, IMHO.
 
Then why  don't you spare  us the lecture  and just do  it? I mean,  if a
cretin like me needed a few years to  do it on such a stone age operating
system as VM,  it can't take an  intelligent person like you  more than a
couple hours on a modern system.
 
>If there is an Internet group meeting  on the topic of LISTSERV, I would
>predict that  they are meeting  to agree on  a common command  syntax so
>that all  LISTSERVs behave  identically, much as  FTP and  telnet behave
>identically under diverse operating systems.
 
The problem of  the group in question  is that it is  mostly comprised of
(1) people whose  goal in life is  to tell other people how  to run their
life and  the whole world  and (2)  people like you,  who talk a  lot but
don't do much.
 
  Eric