NAME News::NNTPClient - Perl 5 module to talk to NNTP (RFC977) server DESCRIPTION This module implements a client interface to NNTP, enabling a Perl 5 application to talk to NNTP servers. It uses the OOP (Object Oriented Programming) interface introduced with Perl 5. ########################## # YEAR 2000 (Y2K) NOTICE # ########################## I've made changes to make this module "Year 2000" compliant (catch phrase of the millennium?). If your NNTP server is "Year 2000" compliant, things should work without modification. If your NNTP server is NOT "Year 2000" compliant, you will need to use the y2k() method to turn off y2k compliance in News::NNTPClient. To do this, just add a call to the y2k() method after the call to new: $c = new News::NNTPClient; $c->y2k(0); This affects these methods: newgroups() newnews() xmotd() which call yymmdd_hhmmss() If you don't use any of these methods, then you shouldn't be affected by year 2000 problems. My NNTP server is not yet year 2000 compliant, so these changes have not been well tested. However, calls to yymmdd_hhmmss() work as expected. CHECKING YOUR SERVER FOR YEAR 2000 COMPLIANCE To tell if your server is "Year 2000" compliant, try the following (this doesn't use News::NNTPClient): telnet news.server.com 119 newnews test 19990101 000000 quit If it comes back with 501 Bad date then it probably is NOT "Year 2000" compliant. If it comes back with 203 New news follows then it probably is "Year 2000" compliant. CHANGES RELEASED TO CPAN 0.33 Removed (c), fixed spelling. Removed date checks from test.pl. 0.32 Added Y2K flag and method to enable use with old servers. 0.31 Documented xhdr allows Message-ID. 0.30 Change USAGE to SYNOPSIS in documentation. 0.29 Added Y2K fix. Generates YYYYMMDD HHMMSS instead of YYMMDD HHMMSS. RELEASED TO CPAN 0.28 Added GMT. Use gmt() method to set to GMT mode. 0.27 Delete reference to fetch by e-mail. Most fetch from CPAN now. RELEASED TO CPAN 0.26 Moved initialization to separate subroutine so it may be sub-classed. 0.25 General cleanup and update to use Socket-1.5 and perl 5.002. 0.24 Moved documentation to end of module. 0.23 Created README, changed $version to $VERSION, started using Makefile.PL. RELEASED TO CPAN 0.22 Better failure handling. 0.21 Made hostname lookup less strict. 0.20 Fixed message(), created internal msg(), changed date() and xpath() to use msg(). 0.19 Updated documentation. 0.18 Allow null responses, report garbled responses. RELEASED TO CPAN 0.17 Updated documentation. 0.16 Fixed bug in debug initialization. ... INSTALLATION To install News::NNTPClient, perform the following steps. You'll likely need to have system administration (a.k.a. root, super-user) privilege to perform the install step: perl Makefile.PL make make install If that doesn't do it for you, you can try the following manual steps: Copy NNTPClient.pm to perl5lib, where perl5lib is your local Perl 5 library directory, usually /usr/local/lib/perl5. You'll likely have to create the News directory, as the perl5 distribution doesn't normally include it. Be sure to give everyone read permission on the file and read/execute permission on the directory. umask 022 mkdir /usr/local/lib/perl5/News cp NNTPClient.pm /usr/local/lib/perl5/News You could then run the following to create a man page: cd /usr/local/lib/perl5/News pod2man NNTPClient.pm > /usr/local/man/man1/NNTPClient.1 AUTHOR Rodger V. Anderson SOURCE The latest version may be retrieved from your nearest CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) site, in the directory CPAN/modules/by-module/News. A list of CPAN sites can be found at: http://www.perl.com/perl/CPAN/CPAN.html You might also try: http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/News/ COPYRIGHT Copyright 1995 Rodger Anderson. All rights reserved. This module is free software; you may redistribute and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.