Kill / Want Filters

BNR supports both Kill and Want filters for articles. "Killing" an article means that you do not want to see articles that have a filename, subject or author matching a given pattern (actually, you can still see these articles if you select "Show killed articles" on View Menu). Similarly "Wanting" an article means that you want BNR to mark articles matching a certain pattern with a special color so you don't accidentally miss articles that interest you.

To store a new pattern into Kill or Want filters, select an article or a group of articles in Article List window and press 'k' (for "Kill") or 'w' (for "Want"), or use the Right-Click menu if you prefer to work with a mouse. Now you will get a popup window where you can input the pattern you wish to add to the Kill or Want file, or you can go to edit the file directly (if you wish to remove some patterns or edit the existing patterns). The popup window looks like this:

Using the fields

There are five radio buttons on the form to select what to kill (or want if you are using the want filter). The meaning of each of the radio buttons is as follows:

• All selected filenames. If you select this radiobutton, all the filenames of all the articles you have selected will be killed (or wanted). This radiobutton defaults to checked if you have selected several articles whose filenames do not form a complete set. BNR will attempt to find the least number of patterns needed to represent the selected filenames by using wildcards when storing the patterns into KillFile (or WantFile).
• Full set. If you select this option you can give the first filename and last filename of a full set you wish to kill (or want). BNR will add to killfile several patterns (if necessary) so that all the filenames that belong to a set will be killed. BNR considers a "set" to be a group of filenames containing a numeric part running from the first given filename up to the second given filename.
• Filename. You can give a single filename or filename pattern with this selection. The available wildcards are ? (matches any character), * (matches any number of any characters), # (matches a single number, 0..9) and \ (escapes the special meaning of the following character).
• Subject. With this selection you can match a pattern within a subject. Note! If the pattern contains no wildcards, BNR automatically adds an asterisk at the start and end of the pattern so that the given pattern matches a substring of an article subject.
• From. You can match a pattern (or an exact author) with this setting to add this article author to killfile (or wantfile). If you haven't selected to download From headers, this option is greyed out.

Using the buttons

With the OK button you accept the new pattern and store it into KillFile or WantFile. This button also closes this window and re-runs the filter within the article list, so you will immediately see the result of this new pattern.

With the Cancel button you can close this window without storing a new pattern. The filter will not be re-run, unless you have edited the KillFile or WantFile.

With "Edit KillFile..." or "Edit WantFile..." you can edit the contents of these files directly. See Kill / Want Editor for more information.

By pressing Help you can view this help page.

When the kill and want filters are run

BNR runs the kill and want filters automatically after FileCheck has been run. The filters are re-run also when you add a new pattern (that is, when you close the kill or want window shown above with the "OK" button), or when you close the Kill / Want Editor after you have made changes to the patterns.

Performance considerations

If you have several hundred patterns in your killfile or wantfile and the "Killing articles...." phase takes a while to run, you should check the way you use the patterns. The number of patterns in the killfile or wantfile does not have a great impact on the filtering speed, however using a lot of wildcards can slow down the filtering noticeably. It is also better to use question marks instead of asterisks as wildcards whenever possible. BNR matches the patterns starting at the end, therefore patterns that end with a wildcard are the slowest to match.