NAME

       applyfilter - apply filter settings to news spool

SYNOPSIS

       applyfilter [-v] ... newsgroup

DESCRIPTION

       Leafnode  is  a  USENET  package  intended  for small sites, where there are few users and
       little disk space, but where a large number of groups is desired.

       Applyfilter is the program to apply filter settings to your newsspool, particularly  after
       changes  that  were not in effect at the time the articles were downloaded with fetchnews.
       Applyfilter is used if you want to remove postings from  your  spool  matching  a  certain
       filter  pattern (see FILES below). If the headers of an article match any of the filtering
       rules, the article is being deleted from the newsgroup.

       Applyfilter sets its real and effective uid to "news".

OPTIONS

       -v     Be verbose.

       newsgroup
              is the newsgroup you want to apply the filter to.

FILES

       A file specified in the filterfile option of /etc/news/leafnode/config contains the set of
       filtering  rules that are applied to the newsspool.  Each rule must be on a separate line.
       Empty lines and comments (marked by a # which MUST be at the beginning of  the  line)  are
       allowed and will be ignored.

       Each  line  contains  a  regular  expression that will be compiled with the PCRE_MULTILINE
       option set (unless it is a comment line  or  an  empty  line).  Every  regular  expression
       applied  to the whole message header (folded message headers are unfolded before the match
       is attempted).  If any regular expression matches the header, the  posting  gets  removed.
       For example, the following set of rules will delete all crosspostings to alt.flame.

       ^Newsgroups:.*[, ]alt.flame$
       ^Newsgroups:.*[, ]alt.flame,

       ^Newsgroups:  indicates that the pattern should only be applied to the Newsgroups: header.
       After the header, an arbitrary number of characters may follow, ending in either  a  comma
       or  a  space.  After  that,  alt.flame  must be in the line, either at the end of the line
       (first entry) or in the middle of the line, followed by other newsgroups (second entry).

       Unfortunately, regular expressions are a complex matter and  outside  the  scope  of  this
       document. Please see the manual pages provided with the PCRE library for details.

       Note  that  some leafnode programs (such as fetchnews) feed the header line by line to the
       regexp (after unfolding), others (such as applyfilter) feed the whole header in one  large
       blob.  This  does  not usually matter because patterns are compiled in multiline mode, but
       will matter if you are trying to match multiple headers in the same regexp  –  this  would
       work with applyfilter, but not with fetchnews.

ENVIRONMENT

       LN_LOCK_TIMEOUT
              This  variable  is  parsed  as  an  unsigned  integer value and determines how many
              seconds applyfilter will wait when trying to obtain  the  lock  file  from  another
              leafnode program. 0 means to wait indefinitely. This variable takes precedence over
              the configuration file.

AUTHOR

       Copyright 1999 by Cornelius Krasel <krasel@wpxx02.toxi.uni-wuerzburg.de>.
       Copyright 2002 – 2006 by Matthias Andree <matthias.andree@gmx.de>.

       Leafnode was originally written by Arnt Gulbrandsen <agulbra@troll.no> and is copyright
       1995 – 1996 Troll Tech AS, Postboks 6133 Etterstad, 0602 Oslo, Norway, fax +47 22646949.

SEE ALSO

       pcre2pattern(3), leafnode(8), fetchnews(8), texpire(8).