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Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!dave
From: dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman)
Newsgroups: net.news.b,net.bugs
Subject: bug in news/mail beginning with single "."
Message-ID: <3157@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Jan-84 23:41:29 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.3157
Posted: Wed Jan 18 23:41:29 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Jan-84 00:24:58 EST
Organization: The Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 22

I recently posted an article to {can.politics,net.jokes} in which
I wanted to indent the text (it was a quote). Knowing about the
well-known first-line bug, I wisely put a single character at the
beginning of the first line. Wanting it to be relatively unconspicious,
I selected the dot ("."). Lo and behold, I got private mail telling me
the text of my article was lost. I resent it by mail (to pegasus!avi),
and it was lost again!

It appears that some news systems and/or mailers use the "." alone on
a line as an EOF test even when the input is not coming from a terminal.
I don't know the solution, but you can check whether you have the problem
by reading the next article I post in these (net.bugs,net.news.b) newsgroups.
It will begin with a single ".".

In the meantime, it's probably not a good idea to use "." by itself.
Of course, with "ed" and its derivatives it takes work to create such a
line anyway.

Dave Sherman
Toronto
-- 
 {allegra,cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo}!utcsrgv!dave