procmail
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Re: formail splitting problem

1998-09-01 05:39:15
At 07:03 PM 8/31/98 -0400, Justin Lloyd wrote:
I've got a problem with "cat folder | formail -s procmail".  formail thinks
"folder" is just one big message because none of the "From " lines have blank
lines before them.  Doesn't the RFC require this?  Is this a VM problem or is
something wrong with formail?  I'm using procmail v3.11pre7.

While others have addressed formail here, I will add a note on the RFC.
Nothing in the mail RFCs addresses the storage of multiple messages;
indeed, the "From " line itself is not part of any RFC, but rather
a commonly-used line added during mail delivery on many systems.

Since messages may contain other messages (including "From " lines), this
necessitates some sort of contortion to handle this.  This includes
single-message-per-file (e.g., mh) storage, keeping an external index
of stored messages (e.g., Eudora), or using "From " lines as
the delimiter in conjunction with at least one of (1) escaping "From "
lines within the message as ">From " or (2) adding a Content-Length:
or Lines: header.  UNIX systems by convention (I think) generally force
a blank line at the end of a message to allow a subsequently appended
message to have a blank line before the "From " (which sounds like what
you were not seeing from VM, with which I'm not familiar).

Whatever technique is used, if mail delivery agents (MDAs) and users'
mail clients (MUAs) don't agree about the exact conventions pertaining to
storage separators, ambiguities can result.

Cheers,
Stan

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