Long and Short form IDs

[Arieh Davidoff]

Howdy All,

I have searched and searched and read much of what there is on the Google Reader API but I am still unclear about long and short form item IDs.  For instance, if I retrieve item contents for a specific stream ID (say, "reading-list"), I get long form item IDs.  If I retrieve a list of item IDs for a specific stream ID (say, "read"), I get short form IDs.  Since conversion between long and short for IDs is not recommended I end up with the following dilemma:

If I want to cull already read items from my application's list of saved articles (with long IDs), I cannot do it be retrieving a list of read IDs because those are short IDs.  I would have to retrieve the CONTENTS of the read list (containing the long form IDs).

Is there any way to match long and short IDs?

Very truly yours,
Arieh