how to make rn "catch up"?

[interran at Shasta.ARPA]

There IS an easier way to use rn to mark all newsgroups as read. 

You predefine a macro, &&c cy, so that "c" marks a newsgroup as read.  You
make the macro a part of rn's initialization by defining the csh environment
variable RNMACRO like this to point to a macro definitions file:

% setenv RNMACRO $HOME/.rnmacros

The .rnmacros file contains one macro definition per line like this:

# this is the "c" macro
c	cy
etc.

Then to blast all newsgroups to oblivion you simply type

% yes c | rn 

at the shell prompt.  yes repeatedly outputs "c", and rn acts upon "c" as a
command for each succeeding unread newsgroup.  When all the newsgroups have
been marked, rn loops endlessly at the end so you have to hit ^C to
interrupt it.  Then the next time you invoke rn all the newsgroups will have
been read unless some news has come in already.

This won't work if rn finds a new newsgroup and asks you if you want it to
be added to your .newsrc file.  It'd be a good idea to run rn first to get
any such prompts out of the way, then "q" out of it and type yes c | rn.
-- 

--
John Interrante/ interran at su-shasta.arpa/ decwrl!Glacier!Shasta!interran