Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!scs!spl1!laidbak!att!pacbell!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!ubc-cs!van-bc!skl
From: skl@van-bc.UUCP (Samuel Lam)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Poll on shar formats
Message-ID: <1786@van-bc.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jun 88 08:45:15 GMT
Article-I.D.: van-bc.1786
References: <4838@teddy.UUCP> <887@fig.bbn.com>
Organization: Balliffe Consulting, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 23
Summary: Lines *beginning* with a dot is dangerous, *even* if the dot is not on the line alone.

In article <887@fig.bbn.com>, rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) wrote:
>
> >For some reason, people assume that a dot beginning a line is a
> >"dangerous sequence":  It is NOT!  What they are thinking of is a dot
> >ALONE on a line:  This causes some mailers to terminate reading the
> >mail. ...
>
>This is true in the Arpa-mail and UUCP-mail worlds when all the programs
>are working correctly.
>
>Folks on bitnet have reported problems to me.

I have seen lines beginning with a dot (but with more stuff on it)
being treated as the end-of-message-body indicator by a *non*-BITNET
mailer as well.

Needless to say I think that mailer is broken, but getting someone
else's broken software fixed aren't necessarily a pleasant task
when it isn't on your machine, and the people who run that machine
think they are experts in electronic mail...

-- 
Samuel Lam     {ihnp4!alberta,watmath,uw-beaver,ubc-vision}!ubc-cs!van-bc!skl