Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!orc!inews!iwarp.intel.com!gargoyle!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Who comments out the From_ lines?
Message-ID: <1990Oct23.144806.20579@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 23 Oct 90 14:48:06 GMT
References: <8134@gollum.twg.com> <2222@sunic.sunet.se> <2597@cirrusl.UUCP>
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Lines: 23

In article <2597@cirrusl.UUCP> dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com (Rahul Dhesi) writes:

>One day, when I invent a mail handler, it will use ^A-stuffing to solve
>the problem.  The message separater will be <cr>^A^A^A^A<cr>.  If the
>string ^A^A^A^A appears anywhere else, it will get ^A-stuffed into
>^A^A^A^A^A, and get de-stuffed by the user agent.

You already invented a good mail handler.  It's called zoo - it's just
too bad that no one uses it for that.  And like zoo, the correct way
to delimit items in a mailbox is to store the size of each item so you
don't have to slog through looking at every character to find the
seperators.  Besides, a good mailer should be able to handle any body
contents that the transport can support.  Using Content-Type: and
Content-Length: headers solves the problem and doesn't cause too much
damage when handed to mailers that don't understand them (i.e. they
don't cause any new problems for other mailers).

Picking an "unusual" character combination for a delimiter is sort of
like saying that the faster cars go through an intersection, the less
likely it is that there will be a collision.

Les Mikesell
   les@chinet.chi.il.us