Usenet 1994 January/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicjanuary1994.iso/sources/misc/volume36/unpost/part00

Text File | 1993-04-18 | 7.2 KB | 170 lines

Newsgroups: comp.sources.misc,alt.binaries.pictures.utilities
From: [e-mail] (John W.M. Stevens)
Subject: v36i113:  unpost - Smart multi-part uudecoder v2.1.2, Part00/07
Message-ID: <csm-v36i113=[e-mail]>
X-Md4-Signature: 687ba8356663ae94c969c211616c69b9
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1993 05:18:22 GMT
Approved: [e-mail]

Submitted-by: [e-mail] (John W.M. Stevens)
Posting-number: Volume 36, Issue 113
Archive-name: unpost/part00
Environment: UNIX, MS-DOS, OS/2, Windows, MacIntosh, Amiga, Vax/VMS

UNPOST Version 2.1.2

More bug fixes, documentation updates, a new configuration file, etc.

UNPOST is a "smart" uudecoder that is designed to extract binaries from
multi-part USENET or email uuencoded binaries.

Features:

1)  PORTABILITY!  UNPOST has been compiled and sucessfully run on
    MS-DOS, OS/2, Windows, Unix workstations, MacIntoshes, Amiga's
    and VAX/VMS systems.

    The code is written to be pure ANSI C, within reasonable limits.
    (some ANSI C capabilities are not used where they would be
    appropriate due to lagging compliance in most compilers.  Hey,
    Unix types!  MS-DOS (Borland C++ 3.1) is a MUCH better compiler
    than anything I've seen on a Unix workstation!  And their debugger
    is the best I've used, as well).  Unfortunately, there are still
    a lot of Unix boxes that have only a K&R compiler, so it may
    not port well to those.  I personally check to make sure that it
    will compile and run on an MS-DOS box running MS-DOS 5 and Windows
    3.1, using the Borland 3.1 C++ compiler, as well as a Sun (running
    SunOs 4.1.1 sun4c) using the gcc compiler (version 2.1).  I know
    for a fact that the Sun cc compiler will NOT compile UNPOST
    succesfully.

    K&R compatibility is being considered, but it is a low priority
    feature.

2)  CONFIGURABILITY!  UNPOST comes with a default set of rules for
    detecting and parsing a VERY wide range of possible Subject:
    line formats, but no configuration can be correct for every
    situation.

    With that in mind, UNPOST can be configured by the user by creating
    a text file that contains the regular expressions, etc. that
    UNPOST uses to recognize, parse, etc.  WARNING!  UNPOST depends
    almost ENTIRELY on the contents of it's configuration file for
    correct operation.

    Regular expressions are complex, and writing one that works the
    way you expect it to takes care and, most importantly,
    experimentation.

    To this end, the standard UNPOST installation creates both the
    UNPOST executable and a regular expression test program called
    RETEST.  RETEST is like grep, feed it a regular expression and
    a file, and RETEST will tell you what it matched and the sub
    strings that it extracted.

3)  INTELLIGENCE!  UNPOST uses every trick in the book to try to
    guess what the poster/sender REALLY meant.

    Also, UNPOST is not limited to finding all of it's information
    on a single line, or even in the header of a posting/letter.

    UNPOST has succesfully extracted binaries from postings that had,
    as a subject line,

    Subject: aaaa

    because UNPOST recognized the signature placed into the body of
    the article by a uuencode/split program.

4)  FLEXIBILITY!  UNPOST has switches that allow it to be configured
    to do different things for different tastes.  For instance, UNPOST
    will intelligently sort out articles into four different classes:

    1)  Articles that are part of a complete and correct binary in
        the input file.  These are sorted, concatenated, uudecoded
        and written out to a file name that is the same as that
        on the uuencode begin line.

        Depending on the setting of the file name switch, the file
        name of the binary may be modified.  See below.

    2)  Articles that are pure text (no uuencoded data in them).

        If the -t switch and a file name are specified, these
        articles will be written out to the file for reading.

        Obviously, these articles should NEVER be encountered in
        a binaries news group, but not a single day has ever gone
        by that I did not see non-binary postings to binary news
        groups.

    3)  Articles that are part of incomplete postings (four parts,
        but only three have shown up so far), or that comprise
        a complete binary, but one that had an error in uudecoding,
        interpretation, etc.

        If the -i flag and a file name are specified, these articles
        will be written out to the file.  If the -b switch is
        on, incompletes will be written to separate files.  If
        both are on, those incompletes that can be guessed at
        as having a file name will be written to a separate file,
        all else will be written to the file named by the -i
        switch.

        In my experience, two types of articles end up in an
        incompletes file, those that have missing parts, and
        those that have been misinterpreted by UNPOST as belonging
        to a different binary than they really do.

    4)  Articles that are pure text that describe a posting
        (these are usually found only in the pictures groups).

        If the -d flag is set, and the binary to which they
        belong is correct and complete, this article, as well as
        the header and body up to the uuencode begin line of the
        first article, will be written to a file that has the same
        base name as the binary, but with the extension .inf.

    UNPOST automatically mungles binary file names to be MS-DOS
    compatible (the lowest common denominator).  This is switch
    controllable, and can be turned on or off (depending on the
    default setting selected by the person who compiled UNPOST).

    UNPOST also has two lesser modes, sorted mode and uudecode mode.

    In sorted mode, UNPOST assumes that the articles still have
    headers, and that there may be un-uuencoded lines in the middle
    of a uuencoded file that have to be filtered out, but it assumes
    that all parts are present, and that they are in order.  Header
    information, however, is ignored.

    If you use the incompletes file capability of UNPOST, you will
    notice that it writes out the segments that it did interpret
    correctly in sorted order.

    In uudecode mode, UNPOST acts like a simple uudecoder.  UUencoded
    files must be complete, with a begin and end line, and no
    un-uuencoded lines can appear between the begin and end lines.

    However, uudecode mode is the ONLY mode where UNPOST will accept
    a short line (one that was space terminated, but had the spaces
    chopped off) as a legal uuencoded line and properly decode it.

5)  INFORMATIVE!  UNPOST is a very talkative program.  It detects
    and reports many kinds of problems, tells you what it thinks
    is going on, and tells you what it is doing.  All this information
    is written to standard error, or if the -e switch and a file
    name are specified, written to that file.

 Changes for UNPOST Version 2.1.2
 --------------------------------

1)  Bug fix.  I screwed up the regular expression compilation for the
    -r switch.  Fixed.  See note 5 for version 2.1.1 in the changes.doc
    file for information on how to select one of four sources for your
    news.

[e-mail]

exit 0 # Just in case...