I'm always trying to improve my own newsreading situation, which is
probably a common denominator in an established newsgroup. Unhappy with
the amount of SPAM I was seeing, I found my way to news.software.readers,
where I was enticed not only to fire OE in favor of Dialog, but I've
switched newsservers as well. news.individual.net has taken all the tennis
shoes, cheap flights to london and lolita porn out of it for me.

Dialog is much-more hands-on than OE. It stores messages in a database
with the filename .mbx . I believe this is called mbox the way that .jpg
is called jpeg. We, the Dialog users in n.s.r., are trying to export the
messages in this database. To this end we have a ruby script, the most
relevant portion of which is MsgFile.rb:

class MsgFile < File
@@separator = "\x7F"
def MsgFile.foreach(*args)
f = File.open(*args)
records = Array.new
records.push f.readline(@@separator)
while not f.eof?
begin
begin
records.push f.readline(@@separator)
wh =[9,32].include?(records.last[0])
end until not wh
nextrec = records.shift
while records.length > 1
nextrec += records.shift
end
yield nextrec.chomp(@@separator)
rescue EOFError
return
end
end
end
end

I don't know enough ruby to say what's going on here. The control
mechanisms for what seems to be an embedded loop are wisplike, like Perl.
It does, however, seem to be records-oriented, so I think it's something
that fortran can get to. Furthermore, indications are that the above isn't
correct.

Can the Fortran Programming Language be brought to bear on an .mbx file?

Thanks and xivjeli,