Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!unido!rwthinf!marvin.e17.physik.tu-muenchen.de!berg
From: berg@marvin.e17.physik.tu-muenchen.de (Stephen R. van den Berg)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Format of mail file in /usr/ucb/mail?
Message-ID: <3961@rwthinf.UUCP>
Date: 15 Feb 91 12:35:45 GMT
References: <12372@darkstar.ucsc.edu> <1991Feb15.023018.960@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Sender: news@rwthinf.UUCP
Lines: 33

In article <1991Feb15.023018.960@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <12372@darkstar.ucsc.edu> haynes@felix.ucsc.edu (99700000) writes:

>>Is this documented anywhere?  There are several questions that keep
>>arising.  Like, one person has a file of saved news articles that
>>he used to be able to read with mail, but now mail -f <filename>
>>tells him 0 messages.  In another case when you save news articles
>>mail will show them with their titles, but after you read them
>>mail doesn't show the titles anymore.  Can anyone explain?

> I don't know where it is documented.  But my experience show the following:

>It consists of a sequence of messages.

>Each message begins:

>	From sender date_and_time

>(I don't know how fussy it is about date, time.  It certainly accepts the
>format of the 'date' command).

The exact (according to numerous experiments from my side, had to know this
because I was writing a mail processor (procmail) that had to 'disarm' bogus
mail headers) regular expression that /usr/ucb/mail looks for to recognize
a new mail message is:
                         "\n\nFrom +[^\t\n ]+ +[^\n\t]"

(If someone can prove me wrong, please say so, I would like to know).
--
Sincerely,                 berg@marvin.e17.physik.tu-muenchen.de
           Stephen R. van den Berg.
"I code it in 5 min, optimize it in 90 min, because it's so well optimized:
it runs in only 5 min.  Actually, most of the time I optimize programs."