🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sunday, in article <818613360.3018@thokk.demon.co.uk>
     Malcolm@demon.net "Malcolm Muir" wrote:

MM> John Washington (john@wash.demon.co.uk) wrote:
MM> 
..
MM> > ..., and SnzPrune is the result.
MM> 
MM> A pedant of course has to point out that SnzPrune does corrupt the
MM> database in the process of deletion :)
MM> 
MM> The fact that the resulting corruption (the renumbering of articles)
MM> is not noticed by the majority of users is key here.

Lightheartedly, but pedantically, I have to point out that,
in the absence of a document describing the format of the
database, and stating that article numbers are a constant,
SnzPrune certainly does NOT corrupt the database.

I'm unaware of even a non-zero minority who suffer from
this, but if a utility exists that depends upon that undocumented
behaviour of Snews, I'll be glad to work with its author.
As you already know this, Malcolm, I do take your comments
in the spirit I know they were intended, but you'll well
understand my caution at this time, since there's a certain
amount of flak going around here at present.  :-)

If you still do think this counts as corruption,
consider a user who saves some batch.txt files,
rmgroup's a newsgroup, and then unbatches a selection of
his files.  Has he corrupted the database, in your
opinion?

Yes:  Snews' own utilities corrupt its database.

No: SnzPrune's actions are conceptually no different
from that scenario.

--
John Washington