🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <836578430snz@pcserv.demon.co.uk>
           paul@pcserv.demon.co.uk "Paul Carpenter" wrote:

>-Count the number of 'From ' lines and the number of 'Status: R'
>-lines. Subtract one from the other.
>
>From experience this process gets screwed up, by paragraphs like this one,
>because the start of the paragraph is '<newline><newline>From' which is the
>SAME as the way the DOS package reads the start of a message.

No it doesn't with mail, because KA9Q sticks '>' on the front of any
line starting with "From ".  In news batches this doesn't happen because
it uses a different mechanism (the #! rnews line contains a character
count for the message so other #! rnews lines within it get ignored).

There are lots of programs which hande mail fine with just the "From "
string (note, you have to match it at the start of the line, not
stripping off spaces or anything like that; use (Left$(lin$,5) = "From ")
to test, not Instr etc.) including PCELM, VIEW, John Washington's
mail2snz, my mail to news script, Tim Illingworth's Listserv software,
my list and mail server software, etc.

>The addendum I would make is that the next line contains a valid header code
>to be a bit safer on counting the 'From' by counting 'From' plus next line has
>started with 'RFC822 keyword:' then do the subtraction as before.

That *will* mess up, because several mailers include non-822 headers and
they may be before you find an 822 one.  You might be safe saying "at
least one RFC 822 header before you find a blank line" but it's really
not necessary.

.-------------------------------.-------------------------------------.
|    chris@keris.demon.co.uk    |  FIAWOL (Filking Is A Way Of Life)  |
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