Minimal nntp client

Ruby
1

I’m relatively new to ruby, having had one thread regarding commenting.

I’d like to move on to a more authentic task. I would like to write an
analogous script in ruby as this perl script:

minimal nntp client

#!/usr/bin/perl -1

use strict;
use warnings;
use Net::NNTP;
use Date::Parse;

my $nsrv=‘news.newsgroups.com’;
my $grp=‘alt.religion.mormon’;
my $USER = ‘’;
my $PASS = ‘’;

my $nntp=Net::NNTP->new($nsrv) or die “Can’t login to `$nsrv’$!\n”;
$nntp->authinfo($USER,$PASS) or die $!;
my (undef, $first, $last, undef)=$nntp->group($grp)
or die “Can’t access $grp\n”;

my ($since, @arts)=time-56060;
for (reverse $first…$last) {
my %hdr=map /^(\S[^:]+):\s(.*)$/g, @{$nntp->head($)};
defined(my $date=$hdr{‘NNTP-Posting-Date’}) or next;
defined(my $time=str2time $date)
or warn "Couldn’t parse date for article $ ($date)\n"
and next;
last if $time < $since;
unshift @arts, $_;
}

$nntp->article($_,*STDOUT) for @arts;

perl client2.pl >text59.txt 2>text56.txt

END

This script retrieves the messages of the last five hours in the
specified ng.

Q1) What is the ruby analog to the perl use of strict and warnings?

Q2) What analog does ruby have of net:nntp?

Thanks in advance,

2

Gerry F. wrote:

use warnings;
my (undef, $first, $last, undef)=$nntp->group($grp)
unshift @arts, $_;
Q1) What is the ruby analog to the perl use of strict and warnings?

Q2) What analog does ruby have of net:nntp?

Thanks in advance,

Shameless plug:

There’s my small library at
http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-net-nntp/. Can be installed via
rubygems (gem install ruby-net-nntp) and used according to the
documentation.

It’s still not 100% feature complete, so I consider it in beta state,
but covers most ofyour needs, and if you need assistance, just ask me.

tony

3

Anton B. wrote:

Gerry F. wrote:

Q2) What analog does ruby have of net:nntp?

Thanks in advance,

Shameless plug:

There’s my small library at
http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-net-nntp/. Can be installed via
rubygems (gem install ruby-net-nntp) and used according to the
documentation.

It’s still not 100% feature complete, so I consider it in beta state,
but covers most ofyour needs, and if you need assistance, just ask me.
Thanks Anton.

I downloaded your library as well as the nntp gem. My next question is
where I should put it. When I downloaded a perl date::parse module,
what they expect is that it gets put in the site file, and then has a
folder called ‘Date’ wherein lies Parse.pm

This screenshot shows my gem subdirectory: http://zaxfuuq.net/ruby5.jpg
. The directory just keeps sprawling. Where all would ruby.exe look
for something required?

My second question is how to call something from these gems. They seem
inscrutable to me.

Beautiful night here in New Mexico. Cheers.

4

Thomas W. wrote:

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 2:32 AM, Gerry F. [email protected] wrote:

Q1) What is the ruby analog to the perl use of strict and warnings?

I am not really experienced in Perl, but as I understand it. strict
enforces that you have to declare variables, so that when you mistype
something an error occurrs. You get a NameError in Ruby when you use a
variable which hasn’t any value assigned:

irb

foo has a value

foo = “Hello”
puts foo # “Hello”

bar is not declared

puts bar

NameError: undefined local variable or method `bar’ for main:Object

from (irb):6

As far as I know you can’t turn warnings on from your code, but you
can run Ruby with the “-w” option which shows warnings.
Thanks, Thomas. It sounds like ruby is already “strict” in the perl
sense. As for warnings, I’ll enable them on the goocher, which is what
I call a dos command that I comment out at the end of a script: Thus

perl client2.pl >text59.txt 2>text56.txt

END
becomes, in ruby, with warnings enabled:

ruby -w client2.rb >text59.txt 2>text56.txt

END

Cheers.

5

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 2:32 AM, Gerry F. [email protected] wrote:

Q1) What is the ruby analog to the perl use of strict and warnings?

I am not really experienced in Perl, but as I understand it. strict
enforces that you have to declare variables, so that when you mistype
something an error occurrs. You get a NameError in Ruby when you use a
variable which hasn’t any value assigned:

irb

foo has a value

foo = “Hello”
puts foo # “Hello”

bar is not declared

puts bar

NameError: undefined local variable or method `bar’ for main:Object

from (irb):6

As far as I know you can’t turn warnings on from your code, but you
can run Ruby with the “-w” option which shows warnings.