Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!rutgers!usc!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!twg.com!david From: david@twg.com (David S. Herron) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: Who comments out the From_ lines? Message-ID: <8152@gollum.twg.com> Date: 23 Oct 90 21:22:16 GMT References: <1990Oct21.160918.9684@smsc.sony.com> <8134@gollum.twg.com> <2222@sunic.sunet.se> Reply-To: david@twg.com (David S. Herron) Organization: The Wollongong Group, Palo Alto, CA Lines: 30 In article <2222@sunic.sunet.se> bygg@sunic.sunet.se (Johnny Eriksson) writes: >Wrong. RFC822 allows for all ASCII characters (0.-127. inclusive) to >appear in message bodies. The same goes for the text on the Subject >line. "Subject: ^A^A^A^A" is perfectly legal... > >--Johnny Oops.. I know why I said that: It generally isn't "safe" to use non-printable characters because The end-of-line marker can vary from system The interpretation of TAB can vary etc.. All of which are open to interpretation during the SMTP conversation. In fact, the end-of-line marker used during SMTP is supposed to be CRLF for *all* messages, not CR, not LF .. CRLF. (See RFC-822 section 3.3 for the EBNF of a message ..) You gotta admit though. Even if ^A^A^A^A is valid for a message it's an awfully unlikely string as opposed to "From" occuring at the beginning of the line.. I still prefer mh's way of keeping messages in seperate files. -- <- David Herron, an MMDF & WIN/MHS guy, <- Formerly: David Herron -- NonResident E-Mail Hack <- <- Remember: On System V it's "tar xovf", not "tar xvf"!