FILECHAN(8)FILECHAN(8)NAMEfilechan - file-writing backend for InterNetNews
SYNOPSISfilechan [ -d directory ] [ -f fields ] [ -m mapfile ] [ -p pidfile ]
DESCRIPTION
Filechan reads lines from standard input and copies certain fields in
each line into files named by other fields within the line. Filechan
is intended to be called by innd(8) as a channel feed. (It is not a
full exploder and does not accept commands; see newsfeeds(5)forade‐
scriptionofthedifferenceand buffchan(8)foranexploderprogram.)
Filechan input is interpreted as a set of lines. Each line contains a
fixed number of initial fields, followed by a variable number of file‐
name fields. All fields in a line are separated by whitespace. The
default number of initial fields is one; the ``-f'' flag may be used to
specify a different number of fields.
For each line of input, filechan writes the initial fields, separated
by whitespace and followed by a newline, to each of the files named in
the filename fields. When writing to a file, filechan opens it in
append mode and tries to lock it and change the ownership to the user
and group who owns the directory where the file is being written.
By default, filechan writes its arguments into the directory
/var/spool/news/out.going. The ``-d'' flag may be used to specify a
directory the program should change to before starting.
If the ``-p'' flag is used, the program will write a line containing
its process ID (in text) to the specified file.
If filechan is invoked with ``-f 2'' and given the following input:
news/software/b/132 <1643@munnari.oz.au> foo uunet
news/software/b/133 <102060@litchi.foo.com> uunet munnari
comp/sources/unix/2002 <999@news.foo.com> foo uunet munnari
Then the file foo will have these lines:
news/software/b/132 <1643@munnari.oz.au>
comp/sources/unix/2002 <999@news.foo.com>
the file munnari will have these lines:
news/software/b/133 <102060@litchi.foo.com>
comp/sources/unix/2002 <999@news.foo.com>
and the file uunet will have these lines:
news/software/b/132 <1643@munnari.oz.au>
news/software/b/133 <102060@litchi.foo.com>
comp/sources/unix/2002 <999@news.foo.com>
Because the time window in which a file is open is very small, compli‐
cated flushing and locking protocols are not needed; a mv(1) followed
by a sleep(1) for a couple of seconds is sufficient.
A map file may be specified by using the ``-m'' flag. Blank lines and
lines starting with a number sign (``#'') are ignored. All other lines
should have two host names separated by a colon. The first field is
the name that may appear in the input stream; the second field names
the file to be used when the name in the first field appears. For
example, the following map file may be used to map the short names
above to the full domain names:
# This is a comment uunet:news.uu.net foo:foo.com
munnari:munnari.oz.au
HISTORY
Written by Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au>, flags added by Rich $alz
<rsalz@uunet.uu.net>. This is revision 1.14, dated 1993/03/18.
SEE ALSObuffchan(8), innd(8), newsfeeds(5).
FILECHAN(8)