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Re: Why is formail not splitting digests with lines of hyphens?

1997-01-30 14:49:23
Stan Janet asked,

| I am getting a digest that is not being split by:
|       formail -ds >> file
| The problem is that articles within the digest are
| separated by a lines of all hyphens preceding the normal
| Date/From/Subject fields. As soon as I delete the hyphen
| lines, formail splits the digest properly.

Is the line of hyphens IMMEDIATELY above each article's headers without a
blank line after the hyphens?  If so, try this:

        formail -des >> file

-e tells formail to be ready to split on any line of the input, not only on
lines that follow blank lines.  It slows formail down, so generally it's used
only if needed.

| Is formail doing the `right' thing by not recognizing
| articles in digests with hyphen lines?

It is if (1) you are not using the -e option and (2) there is no blank line
between the hyphens and the article's headers.

| Right or wrong, what exactly does formail want articles
| preceded by in order for me to be able to split the
| digests? For example, should I be changing the hyphen
| lines to blank lines instead of deleting them?

That would work, or adding the -e option would work too (but it save the row
of hyphens as part of the preceding article).

By the way, the sender of those digests is doing a very unfriendly thing: not
because it requires formail's -e option but because the lack of whitespace is
very hard on readers' eyes.  The RFC that gives the recommended digest format
suggests <blank line><line of thirty hyphens><blank line> between articles;
I send out <blank line><blank line><line of ten hyphens><blank line><blank
line> in mine and also put two blank lines between an article's headers and
its text.

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