Return to READ-ME CVS log

Up to [CSRG BSD Unix] / 43BSD / contrib / mh / miscellany / replies

BSD 4.3

Date:    30 Jan 86 23:07:34 -0800 (Thu)
Subject: Repl nifty
From:    Bob Desinger <[email protected]>
To:      [email protected]
cc:      [email protected]

I've long wanted a way to get someone's original message into my
replies, prepended with those nice "> " netnews-style borders like so:

> This is the original text that the person wrote.
> My reply, of course, prepends the original body with the angle-brackets,
> often called brokets, and skips the headers.

The most obvious way would be to use a repl filter.  Alas, there is no
mechanism to specify a prepended-text-string for the body, except a
number of spaces to indent.  I didn't want to use awk because that was
too easy---uh, too slow on a timeshared machine.  I wound up editing
the replies anyway, most of the time, but I wanted some mechanism to
invoke simply by name.  Ideally it would be some kind of "repl:"
mh_profile entry, but I haven't progressed that far.  (I'm open to
suggestions.)  I got an idea from a sed script of Peter Honeyman's,
which used the extremely rapid sed "b" (branch) instruction to churn
through its input.

How to use this script:

1.  Install it in your bin/ directory, or some other place where you'll
be able to easily execute it, under the name "cur".  Csh users may need
to type "rehash" to get it into their $path right after installation.

2.  Change the script's definition of LINK if you don't use "@" for
your links when replying.

3.  Now you're ready to try it.  Type `repl' and get into your favorite
editor.  (Yes, I realize this is a hack, but most of the time you wind
up getting into the editor anyway, to trim down the quoted [original]
message.)  Go to the last line of the header, on the dashes.  Run the
program `cur' from the editor, reading its input.  In vi, the command
is:

	:r ! cur

and voila!  You have the message body, sans headers, prepended with the
brokets.  Type your response and push it off.

I chose the name cur because of its similarity to the mh message "cur".
Hopefully, users will think of the editor-invoked command as "read cur".

How it works:

Mh does the setup for you when you type `repl' by installing a link
named "@" in the current directory.  This "@" is really a link to the
current message, the one you're trying to reply to.

The first part of the sed script, after the ":header" label, spins
through the message discarding the first set of lines (the header)
until it comes to a blank line.  Then it branches to the label ":eohdr"
with the blank line held in sed's pattern space (== current input
line).  If you wanted to include parts of the header (like "From:" or
"Subject:"), put lines like, say,

	/^From:/s/^From:/> From:/p
	/^Subject:/s/^Subject:/> Subject:/p

just after the "/^$/b eohdr" line which branches to the next section
when the first empty line is found.

The ":eohdr" part simply discards the blank line and branches to the
section labeled ":body."  If you want to put in any leading lines
introducing the quoted part of the original message (like "In Reply
To:" or whatever), the place to do it is right after the ":eohdr"
line.

The last section, after the ":body" label, inserts the broket-and-space
before each line.

Enjoy,
Bob Desinger


# This is a shell archive.  Remove anything before this line,
# then unpack it by saving it in a file and typing "sh file".
#
# Wrapped by hpitg!bd on Thu Jan 30 22:21:38 PST 1986
# Contents:  cur
 
echo x - cur
sed 's/^@//' > "cur" <<'@//E*O*F cur//'
#! /bin/sh
: read in the current message, rn-style
LINK="@"

# Skip headers, then print out the body lines prepended with "> "
sed -n '
:header
/^$/b eohdr
n
b header
:eohdr
n
b body
:body
s/^/> /p
n
b body' $LINK
@//E*O*F cur//
chmod u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx cur
 
echo Inspecting for damage in transit...
temp=/tmp/shar$$; dtemp=/tmp/.shar$$
trap "rm -f $temp $dtemp; exit" 0 1 2 3 15
cat > $temp <<\!!!
      17      43     214 cur
!!!
wc  cur | sed 's=[^ ]*/==' | diff -b $temp - >$dtemp
if [ -s $dtemp ]
then echo "Ouch [diff of wc output]:" ; cat $dtemp
else echo "No problems found."
fi
exit 0

This archive runs on limited infrastructure. Preserving old code on modern bandwidth. Automated agents are requested to crawl responsibly.