[Pan-users] Re: Can Pan search group lists?

[Duncan]

Bear Tooth posted <address@hidden>, excerpted
below,  on Mon, 22 Mar 2004 11:08:30 -0500:

> What I'd like is a second Find command, "Find Groups" perhaps, that I
> could simply type "linux hardware" of "shrike config" or whatever into,
> and have it check the list of all groups for any with my search terms in
> their names.
> 
> Getting back to the case in point: I had in fact stumbled on one, two or
> three days ago, by sheer dumb luck; subscribed; dutifully read through its
> list of posts, and quite a few particular posts; concluded I was on topic
> for it; and posted my query.
> 
> Then I went to look yesterday for any replies. Disaster! I not only
> couldn't remember the group's exact name (nor which server it was on) -- I
> couldn't even spot it again in my lists of Subscribed groups.
>
> Is the Find Group capability already there, under some rubric I just don't
> recognize?

It's already there.. Use the * wildcard, as in linux*hardware, or simply
lin*hardware, or whatever.  Of course, that only matches if the terms are
in that order, so you'd also have to try hardware*linux if you wanted to
know about the reverse order as well, but it's still not TOO bad, unless
you have to try all the permutations of >2 search terms, which could get
nasty..

However.. if you've already sent a message to the group, that message
should be stored under folders, sent items, and if you then remembered the
subject of the message or something and could search for that in your sent
items folder..

Or.. if you haven't sent a message but as long as you didn't delete the
group's storage, you should still be able to find it in the underlying
file system that PAN stores its messages and group data in  (the default
location is ~/.pan/data, therefore, a hidden directory under your home
dir).  Simply searching the file system cache for files containing
whatever search terms you are looking for, should return the message files
for anything that matches.  This is quite handy for whole-message search
as well, since PAN's searches are limited to what's in the various
overview available headers such as subject and author, but a general file
system search for files containing <whatever>, pointed at the pan dir,
will allow finding terms in the other headers and message body as well. 
Thus, it can come in quite handy, at times.  (Of course, this assumes you
aren't deleting the cache on PAN close, but you could still find the group
name as PAN would still be tracking the messages it had seen, in its index
files, etc, so as to not have to d/l old messages all over again.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin