Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!ucsd!rutgers!njin!princeton!twg.com!david
From: david@twg.com (David S. Herron)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Who comments out the From_ lines?
Message-ID: <8157@gollum.twg.com>
Date: 24 Oct 90 16:27:42 GMT
References: <1990Oct21.160918.9684@smsc.sony.com> <8134@gollum.twg.com> <1990Oct23.142320.20180@chinet.chi.il.us>
Reply-To: david@twg.com (David S. Herron)
Organization: The Wollongong Group, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 29

In article <1990Oct23.142320.20180@chinet.chi.il.us> les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
>In article <8134@gollum.twg.com> david@twg.com (David S. Herron) writes:
>
>>The System V stuff looks for the pattern:
>>/^From user <ctime> remote from <blah>$/
>
>>Instead of just "From ".  Given that they're doing something stupid
>>by seperating messages with things which could naturally appear in
						 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>the text, this is a pretty good compromise.
		      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>On the contrary, this pattern is going to appear in the body if you
>mail a saved mail message, a mailbox file, or if you forward a message
>from a mailer like ELM that sends the whole thing verbatim with new
>headers above it. 

Like all "pretty good" compromises it fails in (slightly) obscure situations.

The file system provides very good seperation between messages and one
also gains the ability to have a message in multiple folders.  Anything
else, short of defining some encapsulation format for storing messages
into mailboxes, is a compromise.


-- 
<- David Herron, an MMDF & WIN/MHS guy, <david@twg.com>
<- Formerly: David Herron -- NonResident E-Mail Hack <david@ms.uky.edu>
<-
<- Remember:  On System V it's "tar xovf", not "tar xvf"!