Subject: Corrupted addressbook

From: [email-masked] (Alex Eulenberg)
Date: 8 Oct 1996 17:46:52 GMT

I am a telephone consultant for unix at the university. Today someone 
called and said that when he typed in an addressbook nickname in the To: 
field, he got the name, and then lots of asterisks and the word "loop" 
somewhere in there. I told him to delete every entry and start over 
again.

Then I did some experimenting myself. I was unable to corrupt the file on 
my account, which I believe must have been .addressbook.lu, successfully. 
However, I did notice that if .addressbook.lu is deleted, Pine rebuilds 
it.

The question I have, then, is, is it good advice to tell people to delete 
their .addressbook.lu file if their addressbook is corrupted as described 
above?

--Alex

---

From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 13:45:51 -0700

> somewhere in there. I told him to delete every entry and start over 

This message means that Pine found a loop when it tried to expand a
nickname.  Trace through the expansions and you should find the
error... 

> However, I did notice that if .addressbook.lu is deleted, Pine rebuilds 

The .addressbook.lu file contains a hash table that Pine uses to speed
up searches, particularly for large addressbooks.  If Pine finds it to
be older than the .addressbook file or missing, it rebuilds the file.

> their .addressbook.lu file if their addressbook is corrupted as described 

Deleting the .lu file should not do anything except make Pine rebuild
it.  I would not expect it to solve the problem described above.

> --Alex

--DLM

-- 
|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing, Box 354841
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA