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From: shwake@raysnec.UUCP (Ray Shwake)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Unix mail files.
Summary: A contrary opinion
Message-ID: <38@raysnec.UUCP>
Date: 29 May 90 15:44:42 GMT
References: <23447@adm.BRL.MIL> <1163:May2719:09:5690@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
Reply-To: shwake@raysnec.UUCP (Ray Shwake)
Distribution: na
Organization: IRS - ACI Project Office
Lines: 22

In article <1163:May2719:09:5690@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:

>Yep, exactly right. You'll also note that if a line in the text of a
>message starts with From and a space, the mailer adds a > to the line;
>that way mailreaders won't think that it starts a new message.
>To be precise, the separator is "\n\nFrom ".

The > prefix on lines beginning with From is also intended to cut down on
mail forgeries. Also, while "\n\nFrom " is present BETWEEN messages, the
mailer will often simply look at each line and, if it begins with "From "
judge it to be the start of the next message. You can confirm this by
eliminating the blank line between messages and see if your mailer still
separates your messages.

>There are other popular conventions for mail. The easiest to work with
>has every message in a separate file; unfortunately, this also wastes
>the most space.

This is an arguable position. Separating messages certainly does waste
more space, but makes for a more complex directory structure by requiring
(for efficiency sake) a separate directory for each subject collection,
and makes movement between messages horribly inefficient.