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A kill file contains lisp expressions to be applied to a selected newsgroup. The purpose is to mark articles as read on the basis of some set of regexps.
There are two kinds of kill files, global and local. A global kill file is applied to every newsgroup, and a local kill file to a specified newsgroup.
A kill file is simply a file of Lisp code that is loaded (i.e., evaluated) while the Summary buffer is current. In order to work properly, the contents of the file must be designed to interact properly with GNUS. To make it easier to write a valid kill file, GNUS provides a general function which does the things users typically want to do in a kill file.
(gnus-kill field regexp &optional command all)
The gnus-kill function performs an action on each article that
matches a specified condition.
The two required arguments specify the condition. The argument
field specifies a portion of an article; it is either the name of
a header field to search, or "", which says to search the entire
article body. The argument regexp says what to search for. The
condition is this: an article is eligible if the specified portion of
the article contains a match for regexp.
The argument command says what to do when an article fits the
condition. It is either a valid key sequence in Summary mode, or a Lisp
expression which is a list, or nil. A key sequence stands for
its command definition in Summary mode; it means to execute that
command. A Lisp expression means to evaluate that expression.
nil says to mark the article with the character `X'.
If all is omitted or nil, gnus-kill checks only
newly arrived articles for meeting the condition. If all is
non-nil, it checks all articles.
Here as an example is how to mark all articles whose subjects contain the string `AI':
(gnus-kill "Subject" "AI")
If you want to mark articles with `D' instead of `X', you can use the following expression, which works by executing the d command.
(gnus-kill "Subject" "AI" "d")
The usual aim of a kill file is to delete certain articles. The way to
do this is to mark them with `X' and then call
gnus-expunge, like this:
(gnus-expunge "X")
gnus-expunge takes one argument, a string containing a number of
mark characters, and deletes all the lines that are marked with any of
those characters.
It works to use gnus-expunge for the marker `D', but you may
not like what it does, because this prevents you from ever rereading an
article marked as read in a previous session. That's why the default
marker for gnus-kill is `X' rather than `D'.
Searching in the Summary buffer normally ignores case; this includes the
searching inside of gnus-kill. If you do not want to ignore the
case, set the variable case-fold-search to nil.
After GNUS has finished applying the appropriate kill files, if the newsgroup has no articles left, GNUS exits that newsgroup right away.
You can use these GNUS commands to find a kill file for editing:
gnus-summary-edit-local-kill).
gnus-summary-edit-global-kill).
The same key sequences (M-k and M-K) are available in Group
mode also, but the commands that implement them are
gnus-group-edit-local-kill and
gnus-group-edit-global-kill.
The major mode of these buffers is Kill-File mode, which is like Emacs Lisp mode but with the following additional commands:
gnus-kill-file-kill-by-subject).
gnus-kill-file-kill-by-author).
gnus-kill-file-apply-buffer). This is a convenient way
to try out a kill file you have been editing.
gnus-kill-file-apply-last-sexp).
gnus-kill-file-exit).
The effects of C-c C-k C-s and C-c C-k C-a depend on how you began editing the kill file. If you gave the command M-k or M-K while in the Summary buffer, then the article that was current at that time supplies the string to search for, from its own subject or author.
This is a real example of a local kill file for newsgroup `control'.
;; Apply to the newsgroup `control' if the NNTP server is flab.
(if (string-equal gnus-nntp-server "flab")
(progn
(gnus-kill "Subject" "ihave flab\\|sendme")
(gnus-kill "Subject" "cancel\\|newgroup\\|rmgroup" "d")
(gnus-expunge "X")))
Kill files are kept in the directory specified by the variable
gnus-article-save-directory; its default value is `~/News'.
The variable gnus-kill-file-name specifies the global kill file's
name within that directory; the default is `KILL'.
The name of a local kill file is based on the newsgroup's name. If the
variable gnus-use-long-file-name is non-nil, then the file
name is `newsgroup'.KILL. Otherwise, it is
`news'/group/KILL, where the subdirectory name is made
from the newsgroup name by changing all periods to slashes.
Kill processing can take a long time. If you don't want to wait for it, try background kill processing using the following shell command:
emacs -batch -l gnus -f gnus-batch-kill newsgroups...
where newsgroups are newsgroup names separated by whitespace. `!' preceding a newsgroup name means negation, and `all' specifies all newsgroups not yet decided. These interpretations are the same as the options line of the startup file (see section The Startup File).
Internally, applying kills means to run the hook
gnus-apply-kill-hook. It is called after the Summary buffer is
prepared for a selected newsgroup. The default hook is the function
gnus-apply-kill-file which loads a global kill file and a local
kill file in this order. A different style of the kill processing can
be implemented by customizing this hook.
For example, if you don't have a global kill file, you can use the following hook which applies only a local kill file. This change can save the time for checking the existence of a global kill file.
;; Get rid of the default hook.
(setq gnus-apply-kill-hook nil)
(add-hook 'gnus-apply-kill-hook
'(lambda ()
;; Apply a local kill file.
(load (gnus-newsgroup-kill-file gnus-newsgroup-name) t nil t)))
(As usual, you can put as many functions as you wish into this hook.
What is not usual is the fact that the hook is not initially empty.
Therefore, if you don't want the default hook value, you must set the
hook variable to nil.)
In contrast, the following example enables only a global kill file.
;; Get rid of the default hook.
(setq gnus-apply-kill-hook nil)
(add-hook 'gnus-apply-kill-hook
'(lambda ()
;; Apply a global kill file.
(load (gnus-newsgroup-kill-file nil) t nil t)))
Here is an advanced example that drastically reduces the time for applying kill files. This hook does the kill processing directly without loading the kill files.
;; Get rid of the default hook.
(setq gnus-apply-kill-hook nil)
(add-hook 'gnus-apply-kill-hook
'(lambda ()
;; Apply to the newsgroup `control'
;; if the NNTP server is flab.
(and (string-equal gnus-nntp-server "flab")
(string-equal gnus-newsgroup-name "control")
(progn
(gnus-kill "Subject" "ihave flab\\|sendme")
(gnus-kill "Subject" "cancel\\|newgroup\\|rmgroup" "d")
(gnus-expunge "X")))))
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