Subject: Deleting Alot of Mail

From: Mary Aplin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 1994 16:06:47 +0100 (MET)

During the rash of "junk mail" that came from pine-info this weekend, I 
became so aggrevated with it that I just wanted to delete all of my new 
mail. I attempted to delete the folder INBOX (where my new mail lives,) 
but recieved the message that pine could not delete the 'special' folder 
INBOX.  

How can I get around this in the future??

Mary Aplin
Loyola University, New Orleans

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From: "Ben T. Feese" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 1994 18:01:42 -0500 (EST)

I dunno...I just did it the hard way...manually, msg by msg. 

BTW, in manually marking all these hundreds of articles for deletion, it
occurred to me that it would be great if there could be a *single*
keystroke in pine that could mark an article and move to the next article
in the list; currently I must hit three keys:  ;  <Enter> <DownArrow>

Anybody have any suggestions?

Ben Feese
=============================================================================

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From: Ed Greshko <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994 08:15:21 -0800 (GMT)

> Anybody have any suggestions?
	
	If you *really* want to get rid of all the email in you "INBOX"
you could always do something like:

cat /dev/null > /usr/spool/username

	Another key of interest would be the ";" key.  With that key,
and a few others you can mark a set of messages and then use the "a"
"d" keystroke sequence to "apply" the "delete" command on the marked
messages.

	As a side note...the person responsible for mail-bombing the
pine-info list is a disgruntled child who received less than expected
under the Christmas tree.  Seeing as how the "pine" tree is generally
connected with Christmas, the twisted child felt this was one way of
getting back at Santa.

	Also, generally speaking, the days of 12/24 through 12/26 are
generally slow news days.  Most people have better things to do with
their lives...even if they don't celebrate the holiday.

					Ed

Edward M. Greshko                       Technical Manager, Electronic Commerce
                                        Control Data Asia/Pacific Region
Voice: +886-2-715-2222 x287             6/F, 131 Nanking East Road, Section 3
FAX  : +886-2-712-9197                  Taipei, Taiwan R.O.C

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From: prplhaze <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Dec 1994 19:34:34 -0600 (CST)

> How can I get around this in the future??
i use the following to delete all mail
1. use <;> comand to select
2. then <a> for all
3. then <a> again for apply command
4. then <d> for delete
this will delete all mail messages
hope this helps

[email-masked]  |you can see by my coat i'm from the other side
                       |so can you tell me please..............who won
                       |...go ask alice....i think she'll know........

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From: "Ben T. Feese" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994 11:39:59 -0500 (EST)

The "tag-em-all & then delete em all" method will obviously work quickly 
-- but indiscriminately.  I was not prepared to assume all ~400 of the 
messages in my INBOX, even those with pine- somewhere in them, were junk.
Situations like this often arise--where the bulk of the target messages 
will get a certain action to be applied to tagged messages, but a few 
must be treated very differently.  That's why a "tag & move to next" 
single-key function operating in the index (*or*, even more helpfully, 
from *within* the view mode would be so very helpful.

I trust some of the Great Pine Makers in the Washington Sky who will 
bring us the next version of pine are tuning in to this exchange!

Ben Feese
=========================================================================

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From: Chip Old <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 00:48:12 -0500 (EST)

> from *within* the view mode would be so very helpful.
 
I must misunderstand what you want to do, because in the Index _and_ while
viewing messages, hitting "d" will mark the current message for deletion
and move you to the next message. 
 
It's so straightforward that you _must_ mean something else!  :)
  
-------------------------------------
Chip Old   <[email-masked]>

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From: "Ben T. Feese" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 1994 10:18:49 -0500 (EST)

Yes, I did mean something slightly different--but your response suggests 
a straigtforward way of doing what I want.  I wanted to be able to 
**tag** (but not necessarily for deletion) articles while in View mode.  
However, since tag can be applied selectively to articles  with a 
particular status, including status="to-be-deleted", I could:

1. delete articles individually while in the View mode;

2. then go into Index mode and tag all articles marked for deletion;

3. then apply Undelete to all these tagged articles;

4. then, since these (now undeleted) articles are still tagged, I can apply
whatever command I want to them. 

It should work, and I should have seen it sooner, but somehow it still 
seems a bit clumsy.  What I would really like to see within pine is a 
**macro** function, so that within any mode I could with--a single 
keystroke--apply a whole series of commands to the current article.  Now 
I'll betcha you tell me I can already do *that* too!  ;-)

Ben

P.S.: the moral of this thread is probably that whenever developers make 
something really good (like pine), users will like it so much that they 
will overwhelm the developers with wishlists for gizmos to make it better!
A good job is hard to let go of.
 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =