🚀 go-pugleaf

mrex@aix01.rz.fht-mannheim.de (Martin Rex) writes

> I don't think there's many special things about the mbox file.
> Only that Unix sendmail usually puts a line im the Form
>
> From <user>@<host> <date>
>
> in the first line of every mail message.

> If there's any line contained in the mail containing the word
> From followed by a blank character (Space, ASCII 32), then this
> line is equippend with a leading ">" character.  The regular From:
> in the Mail-Header is the word From followed by a colon, and therefore
> doesn't count as mail seperator.

I think in fact that this line is inserted by /bin/mail on most
BSD systems which (at least under Ultrix) when invoked as "mail"
uses the flag -r to allow specification of the sender, and
writes that line and the message into the system mailbox.

I tried to make sendmail preserve usernames when present, so that
lines like:

From Anthony <heading@hermes.mod.uk> Thu Aug  6 14:34:35 1992

delimited the messages. Some aspects of the mail system coped, but
Emacs RMAIL for example decided that this wasn't valid, and
in fact seems to have quite a complicated regexp to match this
line, demanding it seemed that there was only one word before the
date part started for example...

Is RMAIL correct to be so fussy? Or is it the case, as mrex
writes above, that "^From " is the correct delimiter?

Anthony.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Anthony Heading                    heading@hermes.mod.uk
DRA Malvern UK
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -