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Re: turning recipes on and off

2002-08-27 08:06:10
On 27 Aug, Udi Mottelo wrote:
| On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, David W. Tamkin wrote:
| 
| > Udi explained,
| >
| > | O.K. I see my problem, but, I do not understand why, because I
| > | learn from the sendmail book (O'Reilly) that the format of the
| > | From_ line is "From $g $d" while  $d  is set when  $a  is set
| > | (part 31.10.10).  And (part 31.10.2): "The $a macro holds the
| > | origin date of the a mail message (the date and time that the
| > | original message was sent). ...".  My conclusion was that From_
| > | gives the sender date.  By exploration my INBOX I see that you
| > | right, the date is local - hmmm, confusion!
| >
| > That book is obviously wrong about that.  From_ is added upon delivery to an
| > mbox or by procmail's -f option, and for the very reasons we discussed 
before,
| > the delivering system cannot reliably know the time and date of the original
| > dispatch.
| 
|       Well, I not think that Bryan Costales & Eric Allman(!) made
|       an error like this but, I'll not surpris if I had misunderstud..
|       However, I adopted the  -f-  flag.

Getting far afield here, but just so Udi doesn't think he's crazy...

The $a macro (31.10.2) does contain the date/time the message *claims*
to have been sent, if it is available from a Posted-Date: or Date:
header. Section 31.10.10 describes the $d macro as holding "the current
date and time", as posited by David. It says "$d is given its value at
the same time $a is defined".  Note that says "when $a is defined", not
what $a contains. In other words, $a is not defined when the sender
sends the message (which would be quite impossible), but when you
receive it. This time is the value $d contains. Remember this is
sendmail on the receiving end setting these values.

The confusion arises from the following sentence. "The only difference
between the two is $a contains the date in RFC822 format, whereas $d
contains the same date in UNIX ctime(3) format."  That obviously
contradicts the rest of the two sections. That sentence should read
something like: The value of $a is in RFC822 format, whereas the value
of $d is in ctime(3) format. Of course there may be a correction in
revisions of the book more current than what Udi (presumably) and I are
reading.

Bottom line is Udi's interpretation isn't without foundation, although
full context and (more clearly) examination of actual From_ "headers"
tell the correct story.

-- 
Reply to list please, or append "8" to "procmail" in address if you must.
Spammers' unrelenting address harvesting forces me to this...reluctantly.


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