[Discuss] I'm looking for a "lightweight" nntp client

[Daniel Hagerty]

    Lightweight would be a shell script that uses netcat for the post.

#!/bin/sh

msgid=`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S at linnaean.org`

perl -pe 's/\n/\r\n/'  <<_EOF_ | nc localhost 119
takethis <$msgid>
Path: you!me
Newsgroups: linnaean.test
Message-ID: <$msgid>
Date: `date "+%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z"`
From: Daniel Hagerty <hag at linnaean.org>
Subject: $1

`cat`
.
quit
_EOF_

    You use it like this:

$ /tmp/post "this is a subject" < /tmp/body
200 perdition.linnaean.org InterNetNews server INN 2.4.6 ready
239 <20121028-112226 at linnaean.org>
205 .
$

    If all goes well, you should see a 2xx line for the server banner, a
2xx reply for the takethis, and another 2xx response for the quit.

    This script uses takethis for the post; I can't imagine any news
server doesn't implement it by now.  Older ihave is possible, but a few
more lines and more room for wrong.

    All of the headers are required; adjust them as needed.

    The perl bit is to handle NNTP demanding MS-DOS style crlf line
endings.

    It does absolutely no error checking, doesn't attempt to quote any
body line containing a sole ".", and hasn't had its rabies shots.  Most
of these things could be done, but would take it over the ten minute
example.