[Remind-Fans] how to keep .reminders file clean?

[David F. Skoll]

Paul Pelzl wrote:

> I would strongly advise against this sort of design.  At the moment
> Remind operates on reminder files in a read-only fashion, which gives me
> a nice, warm, safe feeling.  Moving to a read/write model would vastly
> increase the chance of data loss.

Agreed.  The ancient Remind versions had a "purge" option; it worked
something like this:

	  remind -p .reminders > purged

(Don't try this now!  The "-p" option has been repurposed...)

Basically, it would echo every single line from the input file to stdout
except for reminders it could prove had expired.

Maybe we could add an EXPIRES keyword that lets you explicitly expire
reminders on a given date?

REM ... EXPIRES 20 Nov 2009 ...

You'd be asserting that it's safe to delete that reminder after the
EXPIRES date.  I can see massive confusion with UNTIL, though...

Regards,

David.