Re: ietf-nntp Issue: empty groups

[Stan Barber <[e-mail]>]

I can confirm that the reference implementation returns 0 0 0 when there are
no articles in a group. The way that the reference implementation works is to
actually scan the directory in which the articles for a group would be
located and return the total number of articles in the spool between (and 
including) the lownum and highnum at the time of the query. If there are no 
articles in the directory, it returns the 0 0 0. 

It should also be noted that the reference implementation can have this
change through the course of a session, so it will issue the most current
information available at the time of the query.

The reference implementation does use the active file to establish the initial
conditions about article numbers when running the GROUP command. It does not
look for any articles outside this range when figuring out what articles
are actually there. So, it is possible to change the behavior of the
GROUP command in the reference implementation easily to accomodate a
return value of 0 lownum highnum if that is what should be done.

As best I can tell, this is the way it has worked since the initial release
of the 1.5 version of the reference implementation.

-- 
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Barber | URL- http://www.academ.com/academ |Opinions expressed are only mine.