Getting to know Archie - part two

The previous article in THE INSTITUTE's e-mail series {August/September, p12] introduced Archie, a technique for finding information in computers connected to the Internet and described how to access the service using telnet. This article deals with the two alternative means of access: e-mail and the Archie command.

ARCHIE VIA E-MAIL.   Many e-mail users have access to the Internet for e-mail messaging but not for remote log-on with telnet and ftp commands. In these circumstances, use the e-mail access option. This option also takes less time for the user than an interactive Archie session.

To access Archie using e-mail, send a message to "archie@archie.au" (remembering to substitute the address of the Archie server closest to you). You do not need a subject, which in any case would be ignored.

Your message should contain the Archie commands, one per line, starting in column one. If you send a one-line message containing the word help, you will get back a guide for accessing Archie via e-mail. If Archie cannot understand your message, you get the guide anyway.

If you have a signature file that is automatically appended at the end of your message, enter the Archie command quit as the last command line (to tell Archie you are finished). The e-mail version of Archie is a subset of the telnet version. The matching rule is always x = regex (see the list of telnet commands). Some Archie e-mail commands are:

• help     send the guide for Archie via e-mail
• quit     denote end of set of commands
• path xxx@yyy     send the response to xxx@yyy instead of to your address
• whatis qqq     return filenames with keywords that match qqq
• prog zzz     return filenames matching zzz
• servers     return list of all known Archie servers

THE ARCHIE COMMAND.   If Archie is installed on your host computer, you can use it with the command "archie modifiers string". It is more convenient than using telnet or e-mail, but less powerful because it has fewer search options. (You may be able to use either the telnet or e-mail versions to locate this program and then ftp it to your site and have your system administrator install it.) This version of Archie is equivalent to issuing the prog command in either the telnet or e-mail version, where the string in the cmmand line is zzz.

Four of the modifiers define the matching rule (see the telnet section): -e, -r, -s, and -c. The modifier -e is equivalent to x=exact, and is the default setting. Only this modifier can be used with any other, in which case an exact match is done first. The modifier -r is equivalent to x=regex; -s is equivalent to x=sub; -c is equivalent to x=subcase.

In addition, -hname specifies the Archie server, where name = archie.sura.net or the Archie server closest to you. You can leave this modifier out if you can set an environment variable to define the machine (on Unix set ARCHIE_HOST to name).

The modifier -m sets the maximum number of match returns (default is 95), while -l (the numeral) sets a format of one line per match return. The latter is useful if you want to employ other commands to process the returned data (for example, using grep to select further).

Besides using modifiers, you can direct the returned data to a file fname by augmenting the command "archie modifiers string > f name".

EXAMPLES.   To find out where files relating to the program Kermit are located, use any of the following:

Using the Archie command (if Archie is installed on your host machine), "archie -s -m10 kermit" might be used to request up to 10 matches where any combination of upper- and lower-case letters of the string kermit are contained within a directory listing - including the actual file name and directory names in the path.

Alternatively, "archie -s -l kermit>Fred" would request up to 95 matches (the default) with the same matching rule on up to 95 separate lines, to be saved in a file called Fred in your current directory.

Using the e-mail version of Archie, send a two-line message to "archie. archie.au" (if you live in or near Australia):

prog kermit
quit

The e-mail version uses the regex matching rule, and there is no way to restrict the number of matches. Or, using the telnet version of Archie, issue the same two commands as in the e-mail alternative after logging on. Or make use of additional features to make your search more sophisticated.

Note that electronic copies of THE INSTITUTE articles on e-mail and other e-mail-related items are now available. Send to "info.email@ieee.org" for details.

There is a world of information out there. As IEEE members, we must never forget that information technology is central to our business - whether we are in electronics or power, or in sales, service, manufacturing, or research. We can't afford to be left behind. -- Robert T.H. Alden