[Pan-users] Re: global scores

[Duncan]

Thufir <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Sat, 12 May 2007 07:36:41
+0000:


> %BOS
> %Score created by Pan on Sat May 12 08:30:22 2007
> [~*..*]
> Score:: 100
> Expires: 6/12/2007
> From: <address@hidden>$
> %EOS
> 
> 
> 
> 
> this will increase my posts by 100 ?

All lines beginning with % are comments, so can be ignored, which gives 
us:

[~*..*]
Score:: 100
Expires: 6/12/2007
From: <address@hidden>$

Sections are denoted by brackets [], and list the newsgroups the section 
applies to.  ~ as the first char within the braces negates, so we have

NOT <wildcard>..<wildcard>

as the newsgroup specifier.  Since .. should never occur together, that 
should indeed match all groups.

However, if you are indeed trying to match all groups, that's a somewhat 
inefficient match.  Why not simply

NOT ..
[~..]

or 

<wildcard>
[*]

All three, [~*..*], [~..], and [*] should match all groups, but the 
latter, [*] is easiest to read.  FWIW, [~..] is likely to be the most 
efficient in terms of machine parsing, because wildcards tend to be 
slightly less efficient to process than literals.

So the newsgroups/section line should be a pass, yes.

The next condition is the score:

Score:: 100

The double colon indicates that all tests are ORed, it will pass if ANY 
test matches.  Single colon would be ANDed, ALL tests must match.  
However, there's only a single test, so that shouldn't matter.

The value, 100, does not have an equals in front, so it should indeed 
increase the value of matching posts by 100, rather than setting it /to/ 
100 exactly and stopping further scoring, as the equals would do.

So that increases matching posts scores by 100, yes.

The next line is:

Expires: 6/12/2007

The slrn scorefile documentation at http://www.slrn.org/docs/score.txt 
(as posted in my previous reply) has the following to say about the 
Expires keyword (line 63 and 64 of the text file):

If the `Expires' keyword appears, it must immediately follow the
`Score' keyword.

If it did NOT immediately follow the Score keyword line, it would match 
an Expires: header in the post, rather than causing the score to expire 
at the stated date.  In this case, however, it's in the correct location, 
PROVIDED you intended it expire on June 12, so we should still be fine.

The date format is either MM/DD/YYYY or DD-MM-YYYY,  Here we have the 
former, so it will be interpreted as June 12, 2007, not Dec. 6, 2007.

Next we have:

From: <address@hidden>$

Most keyword line values including this one match as regular 
expressions.  I'm viewing your post thru gmane, which scrambles the mail 
addresses on this group/list to avoid spam.  Thus, I cannot actually see 
the address you posted with, to see if it fully matches.  However, that 
regex would be

(Since angle brackets, <> are used, I'll use standard brackets [] for non-
literal labels, spaces added for readability, and not to be taken 
literally.)

[no left anchor ^, so match anything here] [literal <] hawat [literal 
dot] thufir [literal @] gmail [literal dot] com [literal >] [right anchor 
$, so anything added will fail the match]

That's the end of the parsed match as you posted, so yes, it should 
indeed add 100 to the score of anything posted with that From header, 
assumed to be yours, in any group.  

An exception would be anything matching an =value score above that entry, 
since =scores score /exactly/ that if the match, and the scorefile 
parsing stops at that point for that post.  Of course, if it matches an 
=score below, it will add 100 here, but that ultimately won't matter a 
bit, since it sets the score directly equal to some value, in the =score 
match below.

If it doesn't seem to be working, therefore, double-check that you 
haven't set some =score, say =200, applying to say anything in whatever 
hierarchy you happen to be in at the moment.  Of course, also double-
check the expiry if any on the score that you believe should apply, to 
make sure it hasn't passed.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman