Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!srcsip!nic.MR.NET!thor.acc.stolaf.edu!stolaf!towfiq From: towfiq@interlan.Interlan.COM (Mark Towfigh) Newsgroups: comp.os.os2 Subject: Re: Rubbish in messages (Signature files) Message-ID: Date: 1 Feb 90 16:54:40 GMT References: <289.25C6D777@weyr.FIDONET.ORG> Sender: news@thor.acc.stolaf.edu Organization: Racal InterLan Inc., Boxborough, MA (1-800-LAN-TALK) Lines: 40 In-reply-to: lowey@f43.n140.z1.FIDONET.ORG's message of 31 Jan 90 00:30:09 GMT In article <289.25C6D777@weyr.FIDONET.ORG> lowey@f43.n140.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Kevin Lowey) writes: The only solution to this problem is a voluntary reduction in the size of the .signature files on the part of our UUCP friends. I am not sure of this. Read on. I am going to write a few utilities that solve a few things: 1) A utility to delete everything but the FROM header information from the Fidonet side of the messages. 2) A utility that converts the "soft" CR/LF used by some OPUS and other systems into hard CR/LF so that terminals on uucp that don't use wrapping will not have problems. (This might be solvable using a different termcap entry, but I'll just try to fix it in the gateway). Unfortunately, since .signature files don't have a standard format, there is no way I can write a utility to strip them out. STOP! Before you reinvent the wheel. The utilities AWK and SED (originally developed for Unix, but now available in all kinds of places for DOS and OS/2) are what you want. A simple script will take care of 1 and 2 for you, and will allow you to easily change the fields you want to remove, without re-compiling and all that. As for "UUCP" signatures (most of us newsposters are on the Internet now), they *do* have a standard format (unless a user has underhandedly appended their signature to the end of their posting). This format is a "--" followed by a newline, and it is tacked on the posting by all standard newsposters before the signature. Telling AWK to simply delete everything after this string is a 15-minute task. Hope this helps, Mark -- Mark Towfigh, Racal Interlan, Inc. towfiq@interlan.Interlan.COM "The Earth is but One Country, and Mankind its Citizens" -- Baha'u'llah