[Mailman-Users] [Repost] Would like to insert old archives into new archives

[Greg Ward]

On 20 August 2001, Sarah K. Miller said:
> When I needed to do this, I simply appended the .mbox file for the
> original list to the .mbox file of the current list (using Pico, since
> that's my editor of choice). Then I deleted the existing archives and
> rebuilt them using bin/arch.

<snarkiness level="high-to-moderate">
Many recent versions of Unix have an extremely powerful and advanced
tool for just this: it's called "cat", short for "concatenate".

  cat new_mbox >> old_mbox

could be just what the doctor ordered.  HOWEVER, you MUST be sure to
have a blank line between the last message in old_mbox and the first in
new_mbox, so you might need this:

  echo >> old_mbox; cat new_mbox >> old_mbox

This is especially useful if you're dealing with 20 MB mbox files that
you don't want to load into your editor -- it's *much* more efficient
this way!
</snarkiness>

Hmm, this started out as a smart-ass, tongue-in-cheek response, but then
got serious.  So much for my reputation.

        Greg