Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!smsc.sony.com!dce
From: dce@smsc.sony.com (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Who comments out the From_ lines?
Message-ID: <1990Oct22.025301.12573@smsc.sony.com>
Date: 22 Oct 90 02:53:01 GMT
References: <1990Oct21.160918.9684@smsc.sony.com> <1990Oct21.215709.14022@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Sony Microsystems Corp, San Jose, CA
Lines: 20

In article <1990Oct21.215709.14022@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <1990Oct21.160918.9684@smsc.sony.com> dce@smsc.sony.com (David Elliott) writes:
>>When I was using a 4.3BSD machine, I found that mail messages
>>containing lines beginning with the word "From " would be
>>changed into ">From " by the mail system (it looks like it was
>>rmail).
>>
>  This is done by /bin/mail during the final delivery of the mail
>to your mailbox.  It is done quite crudely, so that valid text lines
>in the message are also changed at times

I think that's what I said (rmail is often a link to /bin/mail).

My question is not who does it, but whether or not it should
be done.  There are programs that expect all lines beginning with
"From " to have been generated by the mail system.

From what I've heard from other folks, it's not a standard, but
something done by BSD so that programmers can be lazy.  Looks
like I'll be digging into MH tomorrow.