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From: dat@hpcnof.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Lines starting with period.
Message-ID: <49800004@hpcnof.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Dec-85 14:25:00 EST
Article-I.D.: hpcnof.49800004
Posted: Mon Dec 30 14:25:00 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 8-Jan-86 07:03:06 EST
References: <176@oberon.UUCP>
Organization: 30 Dec 85 12:25:00 MST
Lines: 31

>Why can't unix mailers handle lines staring with periods?
>(or is it only lines containing a single period and nothing else?)
>The way it is rejected varies -- some systems truncate the message
>and then return it for misterious reasons (until you figure out the
>problem) and others truncate the message and send it on without complaint.
>There may even be some that handle it properly, but after a few bounces
>your message probably loses anyway.
>						Bob Larson

Actually, it's a holdover from many many years ago when the default
system was a PDP-X and the default terminal was a teletype (remember
those?  No CRT...klunky noisy and expensive to keep full of paper?)
Anyway, a lot of times control characters would be a real pain to
transmit to the host machine, so the software began to accept a 
period by itself on the line to delimit - you guessed it - the
end of file mark!

Lest people think that the defaults have improved any, notice that
on Bell System V the default tty speed if no gettydefs are created
is 300 baud.  yep.  Useful, eh?

As far as a fix, I'd just say DON'T SEND MAIL WITH A "." as the first
and only character on a line.  If you have to send it, prepend it with
a single space or something.

*sigh* meanwhile, here in the future of computing...

				--- Dave Taylor
				Hewlett Packard

				ihnp4!hpfcla!d_taylor