Man page for nntpid

NAME

nntpid - retrieve a single article from a news server

SYNOPSIS

nntpid [ -v ] [ -d ] message-id
nntpid [ -v ] [ -d ] newsgroup-name article-number
nntpid [ -v ] -a newsgroup-name

DESCRIPTION

nntpid makes a connection to a news server, retrieves one or more articles, and displays it.

You can specify the article you want by either:

• giving its Message-ID. Message-IDs are globally unique, so you don't need to know which newsgroup the article was in. Also, they do not vary between news servers.
• giving a newsgroup name and an article number within that newsgroup. Article numbers are assigned internally by a particular news server, so they will be different on other servers carrying the same group.

By default, nntpid will try to display the article using a pager (more(1), unless you have specified an alternative in the environment variable PAGER). This is partly for convenience, and partly a mild security measure: it gives you some protection against the news article potentially containing control sequences that cause unexpected behaviour in your terminal. If nntpid detects that its standard output is not a terminal, however, it will bypass the pager and just write out the article directly.

There is a third mode of operation, enabled by the -a option, in which nntpid retrieves all available articles in the group and writes them to standard output in mbox format.

ARGUMENTS

If you specify one argument, nntpid assumes it is a Message-ID. The angle brackets that usually delimit Message-IDs are optional; nntpid will strip them off if it sees them, and will not complain if it does not.

If you specify two arguments, nntpid will interpret the first as a newsgroup name, and the second as an article number.

OPTIONS

-v

Verbose mode. In this mode, nntpid will log its entire conversation with the news server on standard error.

-d

Direct output. In this mode, nntpid will write the article straight to standard output without bothering to try using a pager.

-a

Retrieve all articles from the given newsgroup. In this mode, nntpid will always write straight to standard output (so the -d option is unnecessary).

AUTHENTICATION

Currently, the only form of authentication supported by nntpid is AUTHINFO GENERIC, using the environment variable NNTPAUTH. It will only attempt this if it receives a 480 response from the news server; if your news server never sends 480 then nntpid will never even look at NNTPAUTH.

LICENCE

nntpid is free software, distributed under the MIT licence. Type nntpid --licence to see the full licence text.