Timothy J. Luoma wrote:
Responding To: Stan Ryckman <stanr(_at_)sunspot(_dot_)tiac(_dot_)net>
Original Date: Sat, 7 Dec 1996 18:50:05 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <199612072350(_dot_)SAA17775(_at_)sunspot(_dot_)tiac(_dot_)net>
egrep -i '^From ' mailbox | wc -l
why doesn't this work? There can be only one "^From " line per
message right? And there has to be one for each message, doesn't
there?
From sea to shining sea.
Did your MDA stick a character before the "From " there? I like it
when they do, but they don't *have* to. Assuming it didn't, then the
egrep will count this as two messages, but formail will get it right.
I use this myself for some non-critical things, so I am curious why
this would fail
If non-critical, or if you just want an estimate, it's probably
good enough in most cases.
Another, harder, example, is when a full message is included with
all headers (including "From ") and this can only be determined by
paying attention to "Content-Length:" in the enclosing message.
Again, formail will get it right, but egrep will count too many.
Cheers,
Stan Ryckman (stanr(_at_)tiac(_dot_)net)