NAME

       prunehistory - Remove tokens from Usenet history file

SYNOPSIS

       prunehistory [-p] [-f filename]

DESCRIPTION

       prunehistory modifies a history(5)-format text file to "remove" a set of tokens from it.  The tokens are
       removed by overwriting them with spaces, so that the size and position of any following entries does not
       change.  This has an effect similar to expiring the article, in that it is still mentioned in the history
       database but cannot be retrieved.

       prunehistory reads the standard input.  The input is taken as a set of lines.  Blank lines and lines
       starting with a number sign ("#") are ignored.  All other lines should consist of a message-ID followed
       by zero or more other fields (which are ignored).  The message-ID is used as the dbz key to get an offset
       into the text file.  Since innd only appends to the text file, prunehistory does not need to have any
       interaction with it.

OPTIONS

       -p  prunehistory  will  normally  complain  about lines that do not follow the correct format.  If the -p
           flag is used, then the program will silently print any invalid lines on its standard output.   (Blank
           lines and comment lines are also passed through.)

       -f filename
           The default name of the history file is pathdb/history; to specify a different name, use the -f flag.

HISTORY

       Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews.  Converted to POD by Julien Elie.

SEE ALSO

       history(5), innd(8), libinn_dbz(3).

INN 2.7.3                                          2025-05-19                                    PRUNEHISTORY(8)