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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cca!mirror!ishmael!cball
From: cball@ishmael.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sources.bugs
Subject: Low level smail problem w/fix
Message-ID: <157000002@ishmael>
Date: Mon, 19-Oct-87 17:32:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ishmael.157000002
Posted: Mon Oct 19 17:32:00 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Oct-87 20:46:38 EDT
Lines: 17
Nf-ID: #N:ishmael:157000002:000:715
Nf-From: ishmael.UUCP!cball    Oct 19 17:32:00 1987


I just ran into a problem installing smail for the first time(surprise:-).
It seemed to work correctly, but several big chunks of the database were
inaccessible.  The problem was that several entries in our pathalias
database contain uppercase characters.  Smail flattens ascii characters
to lower case in its binary search algorithm, so it made the "wrong"
decision on the output of a vanilla sort.  The fix is to fold uppercase
letters to lower case when sorting (sort -f) the pathalias database
output.
	This is an interface problem, not a bug in either smail or pathalias.
Nonetheless, it might be worth mentioning in the documentation for one or
the other.


	Charles Ball
	cball@inmet.com
	Intermetrics, Inc.