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From: jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Survey on damage by mailers.
Message-ID: <408@minya.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 22-Nov-87 08:47:55 EST
Article-I.D.: minya.408
Posted: Sun Nov 22 08:47:55 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 24-Nov-87 04:55:37 EST
Organization: home
Lines: 21

Hello.  I'm interested in characterizing the sorts of damage that the
existing electronic mail systems can do to mail as they move it about.
To start the ball rolling, I'll give a few examples.  First, the mail
command that comes with most Unix systems:

	1. Any occurrence of the string "\nFrom " has '>' inserted before
		the 'F'.
	2. If the string "\n.\n" occurs, the tail end of the file (starting
		at the '.') is discarded.

In addition, I know of mailers that do the following:

	3. High-order bits are turned off (or set to parity).
	4. Null bytes are dropped.
	5. If a backspace occurs, it and the preceding character are deleted.
	6. ASCII tabs are expanded to some number of spaces.

Can you add to the list?

-- 
John Chambers <{adelie,ima,maynard,mit-eddie}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)