GREPHISTORY(1)

💅 GREPHISTORY(1) — the InterNetNews Documentation glow-up ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to grephistory(1) from the INN fam — InterNetNews Documentation, no cap 💖 this page is your little group-chat with the history database and honestly? it's giving useful.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

grephistory — Query the INN history database 🕵️‍♀️

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⭐ SYNOPSIS ⭐

grephistory [-eilnqsv] [-f db] [message-id]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so what does she do? grephistory queries the INN history database for the tea on the message-ID you give her. 💅

If you pass no flags at all, she prints the storage API token of the corresponding article — or "/dev/null" if the article is listed in the history database but isn't actually stored on the server (ghosted, basically 🙈).

And if the message-ID can't be found in the database at all? She prints "grephistory: not found" and exits with a non-zero status. not found is not the vibe, but she's honest about it 😭

🫶 pro tip, bestie: be sure to escape any special characters in the message ID from the shell! Single quotes are the recommended move here, because many message-IDs contain dollar signs and your shell will absolutely try to do something unhinged with them. protect the ID, protect the vibes. 💀

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -e — Only print the storage token if the article is actually stored on the system. In other words, suppress the "/dev/null" or "not found" output for missing or remembered articles. if it's not there, she simply says nothing. iconic silence. 🤫
• -f db — Query the history database db instead of the default history database. choose your own adventure ✨
• -i — Instead of expecting a message-ID on the command line, grephistory reads a list of message-IDs from standard input, one per line. Leading and trailing whitespace is ignored, and so are any malformed lines. Then she prints on standard output those message-IDs which are not found in the history database. this one is used when processing "ihave" control messages 🎀
• -l — Display the entire line from the history database, not just the storage API token. And heads up: if the message-ID is present in the history database but has no storage API token, grephistory doesn't print anything at all. whole line, whole story 📖
• -n — If the message-ID is present in the history database but has no storage API token, print "/dev/null" and exit successfully. This can happen if an article has been cancelled or expired but the history information is still being retained. This is the default behavior, so she's already doing it, bestie 💖
• -q — Don't print any message, but still exit with the appropriate status. quiet queen, still accurate 👑
• -s — Instead of expecting a message-ID on the command line, grephistory reads a list of message-IDs from standard input, one per line. Leading and trailing whitespace is ignored, as are any malformed lines. She prints on standard output the storage API tokens for any articles that are still available, one per line. This flag is used when processing "sendme" control messages 📨
• -v — Print out the hash of the message-ID for diagnostic purposes, plus any other requested information. Fair warning: this flag is not useful with -i or -s. 🧚

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

case one: the requested article is not listed in the history database — she was never invited to this party 😭

% grephistory '<unknown.article@news.example.com>'
grephistory: not found
% grephistory -v '<unknown.article@news.example.com>'
grephistory: not found (hash is 501C66C22932BA91131186D7218201EB)

case two: the article is listed in the history database but not stored on the server — remembered, but not present. the memory remains 💀

% grephistory '<remembered.article@news.example.com>'
/dev/null

case three: the article IS stored on the server — we love a success story 🌈

% grephistory '<87fxeaay1z.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>'
@02014A2DD6231FCC00000000000000000000@
% grephistory -l '<87fxeaay1z.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>'
[B6DDF69376E3CC199246CEC949B3ACAC]  1244517923~-~1244517912
  @02014A2DD6231FCC00000000000000000000@

bonus round: with sm, we can retrieve the article and get its posting date 🎀

% grephistory '<87fxeaay1z.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>' \
    | sm | grep Date
Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:25:12 -0700

% convdate -dc 1244517912
Tue, 9 Jun 2009 03:25:12 -0000 (UTC)

and it matches! 🤯 it lines up with the number recorded in history as for its posting date. math is mathing, the receipts are received. 🧾✨

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💜 HISTORY 💜

Written by Rich $alz <rsalz@uunet.uu.net> for InterNetNews. Rewritten in POD by Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org>. legends only 👑

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🐚 SEE ALSO 🐚

history(5), inn.conf(5), sm(8).

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this was INN 2.7.4, dated 2025-05-09 — go forth and query that history database, you absolute main character 💅✨🍓