🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct27.163948.16496@esfra.sub.org> ebert@esfra.sub.org (Christian Ebert) writes:
[SOH and EOM in mail folders is evil.]
>Why?

Because you should be able to send a binary file through e-mail.  And
if there's some sort of special character that can't be used in a mail
file because it's being used as SOH or EOM, then you can't send a
binary file without encoding it.

SVR4 and MIME, IMHO, do it right.  A Content-Length: header that says
exactly how long the body of the message is, in bytes.  The MUA and
MTA don't look for magic cookies in the mail folder; instead, they
just seek to the appropriate file offset.

>First advantage: You can detect the type of the file by the "magic" ^A^A^A^A

Systems with the From_ delimiter can do this, too.  Look at the
mailbox-recognition code in rn.

>Second advantage: You don't have to *modify* the *BODY* of the message.

Sure you do.  What if I want to send four ^A characters on a line by
themselves as part of my message?

-- 
Marc Unangst, N8VRH         | "There are two ways to solve this problem:
mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us   | the hard way, and the easy way.  Let's start
                            | with the hard way."
                            |   - W. Scheider, from a Physics lecture