/dir/foo;lines=20-30
and file is any text/* document it will return a text/plain document consisting of lines 20 through 30 of file foo. This is very useful for structured text files like address lists or digests of mail and news. A WN utility called digest will produce an HTML file with a list of links to separate sections (line ranges) of the structured file. It is described below.
The option ;lines=[first],[last] can be appended to the URL of any text file served by the WN server. It has the effect causing the server to return line [first] through line [last] of the document to which it is attached. It is ignored and an error is logged if it is used with a binary file. When used with a text file the content type of the returned document is set to text/plain since, for example, a range of lines from an HTML document is unlikely to be a valid HTML document. For any file, including binaries, the server will honor a byte range. A request for
/dir/foo;bytes=256-1024
will cause the server to return bytes 256 to 1024 inclusive. The content type of the returned document will be text/plain if the document foo is a text document and application/octet-stream otherwise.
digest foo "^From" "^Subject:"
will produce an HTML file called foo.index.html which contains an unordered list of anchors. Each has as title the content of the Subject line of a mail message in foo and href the range of lines in foo containing that particular message. More detailed information on the use of digest is in the chapter on utilities.