Let’s try to debunk some myths about overflow words.

 

MYTH #1: The overflow word feature makes frequent technical words unsearchable.

 

This list is the oldest LISTSERV list in the world. It will be 32 years old in 9 days. After all this time, “Windows,” “Linux,” “firewall” or “bug” have not become overflow words. Not even “unsubscribe” is an overflow word. You need words like “LISTSERV” or “mail” to reach overflow status.

 

This is completely irrelevant though, because…

 

MYTH #2: Overflow words are unsearchable.

 

Actually, overflow words are fully searchable. Here is an example. First, I searched for “HPO” in chronological order:

 

>>> Item #501 (28 Nov 1986 19:44) - Re: Misc

 

Holding out until the powers that be see the light of HPO,

                                                      ØØØ

 

>>> Item #801 (6 Mar 1987 14:35) - HELP, I drowning in MAIL from MAILER

to UORVM) because INFO-VAX comes in, gets exploded, and floods RSCS.  What is

a good number for tag slots.  We are running on a 3081-GX VM/CMS SP4.2 HPO.

                                                                       ØØØ

I have very little RSCS knowledge but I think I'm going to have to come up to

 

>>> Item #1081 (18 May 1987 17:29) - AKRON- Nodes

 

AKRONVM will also be upgraded to VM/SP 4 HPO 4.2 at that time.

                                         ØØØ

(…)

 

>>> Item #1724 (4 Dec 1987 11:48) - Running LISTSERV under VM/HPO 5.0

From:         "Daniel P. Martin" <DMARTIN@UAFSYSB>

Subject:      Running LISTSERV under VM/HPO 5.0

                                        ØØØ

 

These messages are about an operating system called VM/SP HPO. Some of the messages contain the overflow word LISTSERV, and some do not. I then searched for “LISTSERV HPO,” and…

 

>>> Item #1724 (4 Dec 1987 11:48) - Running LISTSERV under VM/HPO 5.0

From:         "Daniel P. Martin" <DMARTIN@UAFSYSB>

Subject:      Running LISTSERV under VM/HPO 5.0

                      ØØØØØØØØ          ØØØ

 

 

Has anybody tried running LISTSERV under HPO 5.0 yet?  We're going to be

                          ØØØØØØØØ       ØØØ

upgrading the machine which contains LISTSERV to HPO 5.0 at the end of

                                     ØØØØØØØØ    ØØØ

the month.  Mostly I'm concerned about what effects (if any) revisions

to the CP spooling subsystem may have on the way LISTSERV works.

                                                 ØØØØØØØØ

 

The messages not containing the overflow word “LISTSERV” have been correctly excluded and I got the same result as if LISTSERV had not been an overflow word.

 

But no, you cannot ask for the last 100 messages containing the word, “LISTSERV.” You can browse the last 101 messages by date, though.

 

MYTH #3: Overflow words are a recent, buggy feature.

 

Overflow words were introduced on 1996-09-20. The last change was on 1997-02-26. There have been no bug reports in the last 21 years.

 

On 2013-11-18, a customer suggested a better error message for overflow-only searches, and we agreed. Unfortunately, we made a mistake when implementing that change, which is outside of the search engine, and some valid searches were reported as overflow-only searches, instead of returning the search results that the search engine had come up with. I suspect that this is why overflow words suddenly got a bad rep after almost 20 years with no complaints, but I don’t work in Support so I only see the first ticket. Once we have a confirmed fix, Support stops escalating duplicates.

 

MYTH #4: There is no way to disable overflow words.

 

When we introduced overflow words and DBRINDEX files in 1996, we did not anticipate in our wildest dreams that any customers would be displeased but, as with any major new chunk of code, we were concerned that it might not work correctly as released, so we provided this option to disable it:

 

DBRINDEX=0

 

I don’t remember if you have to reindex or not. I can’t recall this setting having been used after 1997-1998, but LISTSERV Lite has this hardcoded so it is still supported. If you can afford the I/O and wait times, it can be a way to bypass the 2013-11-18 bug without requiring installation of a patch and change management paperwork.

 

  Eric