bug#18198: Gnus fails to read ~/.newsrc with group names which are not symbols

[Ivan Shmakov]

>>>>> Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
>>>>> Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.net> writes:
>>>>> Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

 >>> Well, "[Hello]/World" isn't a valid newsgroup name,

 >> Yet (Hello)/World is.  (Per the newsgroup-name and wildmat-exact
 >> productions given in section 9.8 of RFC 3977.)

[…]

 >> The person who brought this issue to IRC has apparently used
 >> something like (nnimap "imap.gmail.com") for gnus-select-method.

 >> Though indeed, I know of no reason /not/ to set
 >> gnus-save-newsrc-file to nil in this case.

 > There should only be newsgroups in the .newsrc file -- it's for
 > interoperability with other newsreaders, and putting non-newsgroups
 > in there makes no sense.

        There still may be RFC-compliant newsgroup names which contain
        parentheses; and alt.foo.(bar) would fail just the same as
        [Hello]/World.

        Granted, I know of no such /public/ newsgroups, but whoever
        hosts an NNTP server could probably add a local one with ease.

 > So that does sound like a bug.

        As long as there’s no clear indication from Gnus that ~/.newsrc
        could easily break when used together with nnimap (and possibly
        other similar select methods), I’d rather deem it a bug in Gnus.

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FSF associate member #7257  np. Bounzie boom — S. A. Kiviniemi B6A0 230E 334A