News::Scan(3pm) 					User Contributed Perl Documentation					   News::Scan(3pm)

NAME

       News::Scan - gather and report Usenet newsgroup statistics

SYNOPSIS

	   use News::Scan;

	   my $scan = News::Scan->new;

DESCRIPTION

       This module provides a class whose objects can be used to gather and report Usenet newsgroup statistics.

CONSTRUCTOR

       new ( [ OPTIONS ] )
	   "OPTIONS" is a list of named parameters (i.e. given in key-value pairs).  Valid options are

       Group   The value of this option is the name of the newsgroup you wish to scan.

       From    The value of this option should be either 'spool' or 'NNTP' (case is not significant).  Any other value will produce an error (see
	       the "error" method description below).  A value of 'spool' indicates that you would like to scan articles in a spool (see the Spool
	       option below).  A value of 'NNTP' indicates that articles should be retrieved from your NNTP server (see the NNTPServer option
	       below).

       Spool   The value of this option should be the path to the spool directory that contains the articles you would like to scan.  This option
	       is ignored unless the value of From is 'spool'.

       NNTPServer
	       The value of this option (in the form server:port, with both being optional--see Net::NNTP for the semantics of omitting one or
	       both of these parameters) indicates the NNTP server from which to retrieve articles.  This option is ignored unless From is 'NNTP'.
	       See the description of the NNTPAuthLogin and NNTPAuthPasswd options below.

       NNTPAuthLogin
	       The value of this option should be a valid NNTP authentication login for your NNTP server.  This option is only necessary if your
	       NNTP server requires authentication.

       NNTPAuthPasswd
	       The value of this option should be the password corresponding to the login in NNTPAuthLogin.  Having this hardcoded in a script is
	       evil, and there should be a much better way.

       Period  The value of this option indicates the length of the period (in days) immediately prior to invocation of the program from which you
	       would like to scan articles.  The default period is seven(7) days.

       QuoteRE The value of this option is a Perl regular expression that accepts quoted lines and rejects unquoted or original lines.	The
	       default regular expression is "^s{0,3}(?:"|:|S+>|++)>.

       Exclude The value of this option should be a reference to an array containing regular expressions that accept email addresses of posters
	       whose articles you wish to ignore.

       Aliases The value of this option should be a reference to a hash whose keys are email addresses that should be transformed into the email
	       addresses that are their corresponding values, i.e. "alias =" 'real@address'>.

METHODS

       configure ( [ OPTIONS ] )
	   "OPTIONS" is a list of named parameters identical to those accepted by "new".  Re-"configure"-ing an object after scanning is probably
	   a bad idea.	This method returns "undef" if it encounters an error.

       The following methods are the actual underlying methods used to set and retrieve the configuration options of the same name (modulo case):

       name ( [ NEWSGROUP-NAME ] )
       spool ( [ SPOOL-DIRECTORY ] )
       period ( [ INTERVAL-LENGTH ] )
       aliases ( [ ALIASES-HASHREF ] )
       from ( 'NNTP' | 'spool' )
       quote_re ( [ QUOTE-REGEX-ARRAYREF ] )
       exclude ( [ EXCLUSION-REGEX-ARRAYREF ] )
       nntp_server ( [ [ NNTP-SERVER ]:[ NNTP-PORT ] ] )
       nntp_auth_login ( [ LOGIN ] )
       nntp_auth_passwd ( [ PASSWORD ] )

       These methods can be used to retrieve information from the "News::Scan" object or ask it to perform some action.

       error ( [ MESSAGE ] )
	   Use this method to determine whether an object has encountered an error condition.  The return value of "error" is guaranteed to be 0
	   after any method completes successfully (except "error").  (Keep in mind that this will also overwrite any previous error message.)	If
	   there has been an error, this method should return some useful message.

	   If provided, "MESSAGE" sets the object's error message.

       articles
	   Returns the number of articles accounted for.

       volume
	   Returns the volume of traffic (in bytes) to the newsgroup in the period.

       header_volume
	   Returns the volume (in bytes) generated by headers.

       header_lines
	   Returns the number of lines consumed by headers.

       body_volume
	   Returns the volume (in bytes) generated by message bodies.

       body_lines
	   Returns the number of lines consumed by message bodies.

       orig_volume
	   Returns the volume (in bytes) of text which has been determined to be original (see QuoteRE).  Note that original traffic is a subset
	   of body traffic.

       orig_lines
	   Returns the number of lines that are determined to be original.

       signatures
	   Returns the number of messages that had a cutline (/^-- $/).

       sig_volume
	   Returns the volume (in bytes) generated by signatures.

       sig_lines
	   Returns the number of lines consumed by signatures.

       earliest ( [ TIME ] )
	   Use this method to determine the date (in seconds since the Epoch) that the oldest article found within the period was posted to
	   Usenet.

	   If "TIME" is given, it is treated as a candidate for the earliest article.  If "TIME" is successful (i.e. is less than the previous
	   earliest), this method returns 1, else 0.

       latest ( [ TIME ] )
	   Use this method to determine the date (in seconds since the Epoch) that the youngest article found within the period was posted to
	   Usenet.

	   If "TIME" is given, it is treated as a candidate for the latest article.  If "TIME" is successful (i.e. is greater than the previous
	   latest), this method returns 1, else 0.

       excludes
	   Returns the list of regular expressions used to determine whether an article from a given email address should be ignored.

       posters
	   Returns a reference to a hash whose keys are email addresses and whose values are "News::Scan::Poster" objects corresponding to those
	   email addresses.  See News::Scan::Poster.

       threads
	   Returns a reference to a hash whose keys are subjects and whose values are "News::Scan::Thread" objects corresponding to those
	   subjects.  See News::Scan::Thread.

       crossposts
	   Returns a reference to a hash whose keys are newsgroup names and whose values are the number of times the corresponding groups have
	   been crossposted to.

       collect
	   Use this method to mirror the articles from the specified  NNTP server to the specified spool.  Please be kind to the NNTP server.

       scan
	   Instruct the object to gather information about the newsgroup.

EXAMPLES

       See the eg/ directory in the News-Scan distribution, available from the CPAN--http://www.perl.com/CPAN/.

SEE ALSO

       perlre, News::Scan::Poster, News::Scan::Thread, News::Scan::Article, Net::NNTP

AUTHOR

       Greg Bacon <gbacon@cs.uah.edu>

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (c) 1997 Greg Bacon.  All Rights Reserved.  This library is free software.  You may distribute and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself.

perl v5.10.1							    2010-03-29							   News::Scan(3pm)