How to Search the Miles-L Archives

Every post sent to the Miles list is archived automatically. Archive files are digests of all posts made to the list during a single month. The easiest way to search the archives is to request one of these monthly digests. However, since there can be up to 50 posts per day, trying to find what you're looking for in an archive file can be daunting.

The listserv software has features similar to those provided by internet search engines. This makes the archives very useful as a research tool. For example, you can:

• Search for a specific post made during a defined time period;
• Search for posts made by an individual MF;
• Search for posts about a specific subject (musician, song title, etc.);
• Have the listserv send you a digest of all posts on single thread;
• Have the listserv send you a digest of all your own posts to the list.

Essentially, the list archive is a database of information equipped with sophisticated data-gathering tools. Look below for the following topics:

• What's available?
• Basic searching
• Searching by subject or sender
• Retrieving archived posts

Please Note: You can browse and search the archives (back to January 1995) from a very nice web interface as well: the URL is http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/miles.html.

Miles list archives are compiled into monthly digests, which are available to all subscribers on request. To get a list of available archive files for the list, do this:

To: listserv@nic.surfnet.nl
Subject: [leave blank]
Message: index miles

This is what your output will look like:

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
*
*  NOTEBOOK archives for the list
*  (Monthly notebook)
*                           rec               last - change
* file   filetype GET PUT -fm lrecl nrecs   date     time   Remarks
* ----   -------- --- --- --- ----- ----- -------- -------- ------------------
  MILES  LOG9501  ALL OWN V     264 13168 95/01/31 21:37:53  1 Jan 95 23:03:33
  MILES  LOG9502  ALL OWN V     319 12805 95/02/28 23:53:48 31 Jan 95 18:03:45
  MILES  LOG9503  ALL OWN V     253  8166 95/04/01 00:41:50 28 Feb 95 17:14:02
  MILES  LOG9504  ALL OWN V     458  8701 95/04/30 23:26:40 31 Mar 95 18:28:02
  MILES  LOG9505  ALL OWN V     254 11485 95/05/31 23:14:41 30 Apr 95 17:33:09

and so forth.

This is not as obscure as it looks. Simply put, all Miles list archive files take the name log[year][month] -- January 1999's logfile would be called "log9901." Use the get command to retrieve one of these files. For example, if you want to find out what the list was discussing in June 1996, you'd issue this command:

To: listserv@nic.surfnet.nl
Subject: [leave blank]
Message: get miles log9606

The listserv would then send you the complete archive file for June 1996.

This is fine if you don't mind poring through hundreds of posts, but it's not very useful if you're trying to find some piece of Miles arcana you think you saw on the list last year. But not to worry: you can focus your search by telling the listserv software to search the archives using specific parameters.

Look below to learn how to search the archives for a specific topic, subject, or sender. You'll also see how to restrict the search to specific time periods.

All archive searches take the same form:

To: listserv@nic.surfnet.nl
Subject: [leave blank]
Message: search miles [keyword]

Please note: A simple keyword search will probably return thousands of matches, the vast majority of which are unhelpful -- which isn't what you want. A good way refine your search is to limit your quest to a specific period of time. The from, to, since and until modifiers allow you to do this. Use them in the same way you would construct a simple query in English. Be careful, though -- the listserv software is particular about how dates are expressed.

Date formats recognized by the search command:

• today
• today-7 (i.e. seven days ago)
• mm/yy or yy/mm/dd

The listserv recognizes dates only in international format, and requires two digits for each field (e.g. January 1, 1999 would be 99/01/01).

Examples:

Find all references to "Monk" during the past week:
     search miles "Monk" from today-7 to today

Find all references to "Kind of Blue" between September and October 1995:
    search miles "Kind of Blue" from 09/95 to 10/95

Find all references to Bill Laswell during the month of August 1997:
    search miles Bill Laswell since 97/08/01 until 97/08/31

A note on syntax: If you're looking for an exact match for a phrase (e.g. "Kind of Blue"), enclose the phrase in quotation marks. If you don't, the search engine will return return every instance of every word in the search phrase, which is not what you want. Quotation marks force the search engine to find the phrase.

Single quotation marks are case insensitive; 'kind of blue', 'Kind of Blue', or even 'KIND OF BLUE' are equivalent. Double quotation marks are case sensitive; a search for "Kind of Blue" will ignore the phrases kind of blue and KIND OF BLUE match only Kind of Blue.

Here's the output of the first query above:

-> 1 match.

Item #   Date   Time  Recs   Subject
------   ----   ----  ----   -------
019855 97/09/16 11:43   59   RE Kids and Jazz

>>> Item #19855 (16 Sep 1997 11:43) - RE Kids and Jazz
quintet with Coltrane and 69-75.  His other tastes in jazz include
Monk, Ornette, Sonny Sharrock, McLaughlin, Santana, John Scofield (who
^^^^
we saw last Friday night with Steve Swallow on bass and Bill Stewart

See Retrieving Archived Posts for information on getting individual posts from the archives.

You may want to search the archives for posts on a particular subject or those posted by a particular MF. The listserv supports searching by subject or sender through the use of the where modifier. Subject and Sender searches require two sets of keywords, one for the body of the message and one for the subject or sender. These keywords can be identical. You can also use the wildcard character, *.

To find posts with a specific subject, do this:

To: listserv@nic.surfnet.nl
Subject: [leave blank]
Message: search miles [keywords] where subject contains [keywords]

This sort of search can also return a large number of results. To focus it some, try pasting the subject from a thread you want to follow, strip out the "Re:"s, and enclose it in double quotation marks. E.g., to get the posts from the recent "top ten" thread, do this:

To: listserv@nic.surfnet.nl
Subject: [leave blank]
Message: search miles * where subject contains "Top Ten"

> search miles * since 97/08/01 where subject contains "Top Ten"
-> 60 matches.

Item #   Date   Time  Recs   Subject
------   ----   ----  ----   -------
019534 97/09/06 11:44   28   Top Ten
019537 97/09/06 17:57   25   Re: Top Ten
019539 97/09/06 20:20   40   Top Ten
019545 97/09/07 00:50   53   Re: Top Ten
019546 97/09/07 00:53   40   Re: Top Ten
019551 97/09/07 10:34   23   Re: Top Ten

and so forth.

Notice there are two subjects with "Top Ten" subjects without the "Re:" prefix. This means whoever posted item #019539 created a new thread, rather than replying to the original post. In other cases, some people will change the subject header when replying to a post. Search by subject will not always find these posts.

Search by sender works the same way:

To: listserv@nic.surfnet.nl
Subject: [leave blank]
Message: search miles * where sender contains [name of MF]

On a really slow day at work you could use this method to compile a list of all the messages you've posted to the list for the past year or two.

Once you've searched the archives and determined which items you want to retrieve, you can get them by sending the following command to the listserv:

To: listserv@nic.surfnet.nl
Subject: [leave blank]
Message: getpost miles [item numbers]

To get the original Top Ten message, item number 019534, from the previous example:

To: listserv@nic.surfnet.nl
Subject: [leave blank]
Message: getpost miles 19534

You may omit the leading zero on item numbers.

You can use a single getpost command to retrieve a range of posts, and there's no limit to the number of posts you can retrieve. E.g., you can get ten different messages with this command:

To: listserv@nic.surfnet.nl
Subject: [leave blank]
Message: getpost miles 19534 19601-19606 19610-19611 19625

The messages are sent you your e-mail address; they look just like original posts to the list, except that the header identifies the post number and the date it was posted to the list.

Remember: You can browse and search the archives (back to January 1995) from a very nice web interface as well: the URL is http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/miles.html.