Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!crdgw1!underdog!volpe
From: volpe@underdog.crd.ge.com (Christopher R Volpe)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Unix mail files.
Message-ID: <8129@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 1 Jun 90 17:50:18 GMT
References: <23447@adm.BRL.MIL> <1163:May2719:09:5690@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Organization: General Electric Corporate R&D Center
Lines: 20

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 SunOS mail program that I use doesn't seem to use that as
a separator. I sent a message to myself containing "From me@here" in
the body of the message after two carriage returns, and indeed the ">"
was automatically inserted, but I directly edited my spool file 
and removed the ">". When I invoked "mail" to read it, It didn't
confuse the line in the text with the start of a new message,
even though the ">" was no longer there. Could there be some
control characters inserted somewhere?

Chris Volpe
G.E. Corporate Research and Development
VOLPECR@CRD.GE.COM