Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / May 2008

This is what I use:

Kill if "Newsgroups" matches regular expression ".* .* .* "

Try

[^:]+:[^:]+:[^:]

I've no idea why you think colons would be anywhere in the name of a
newsgroup, but there aren't any.  So although banning them is pointless,
it does no harm.

1. Close the gap before the final plus sign
   (I assume that the gap is not actually in your kill file)

2. You then have the repeated structure
   <string of anything but a colon><single space>

3. If that is what appears on screen with your newsreader, then it is
almost certainly an artefact of presentation from your newsreader and is
not the raw structure of the message received.

4. As far as I can tell (which is always a bit difficult with so many
behind-the-scenes utilities rushing in to translate everything), the
newsgroup names are separated by a single comma not a single space.

5. The validity of anything other than basic simple regex expressions
will depend on the sub-flavour of regex implemented inside your
newsreader.  

6. For MacSOUP the form of kill expression explicitly recommended for
multiple newsgroups would for three or more read

   ([^,]+,){2,}

that is the

  <string of anything but a comma><comma>

structure has to match at least twice.

7. MacSOUP actually displays the names of the newsgroups aligned
vertically, one per line, with no commas.

Tip: Construct your filters looking at raw messages not displayed
messages.