svn export for deleted files

Hello Luminaries

I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but I want to
export a directory that no longer exists in the HEAD
revision

Say I deleted a folder with revision 123.
 svn export -r 122 URL/folder/
gives me what I expect, folder with content just before the
commit where a sub directory was removed.

But
 svn export -r 122 URL/folder/now_deleted
results in

svn: File not found: revision 187, path 'folder/now_deleted'

Where 187 is the HEAD revision.

Is this a bug?
I'd rather not have to export at the higher level and then
pick out the stuff I need, but I guess I can.

svn, version 1.4.2 (r22196) compiled Feb 3 2007, 12:58:02
from debian sarge backports.

That is the end of my question. What follows is so someone can
suggest a work around and or completely different approach.

I'm sort of trying to do a

 svn obliterate -zipfile 2007-04-04_now_deleted.zip folder/now_deleted

We are using svn as a shared document management system for
a company of tele-commuting report writers.

In our application, version history becomes less relevant
with age. No one cares about the changes that went into a
report that was delivered to a client two years ago, and
fewer people care about the data that went into a report
delivered 5 years ago to a company that no longer exists. I
thought explicit deletion would be a good mechanism for our
writes (who can just about handle commit and update) using
(the very wonderful) TortoiseSVN to signal that a file is no
longer required, and may be archived.

I am planning to use a dump/load cycle to remove certain
files from the repository for archiving. I can parse
svnadmin dump output with perl and SVN::Dump and get a list
of files that have been explicitly deleted by users, (but
not those that have been renamed). I can also then build a
long
 svndumpfiler --exclude
command line for my dump load cycle, but I want to archive
files as they where just before deletion.

Hope this makes sense, and is not too long winded.
Andrew

-- 
Andrew Creer                    Phone  + 61 3 9689 5299
Systems Developer               Fax    + 61 3 9689 5399
Horizon Research Corporation    
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