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Re: Why not trust the From_ date?

2004-07-25 13:18:19
On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 11:47:36 -0600, Justin Gombos 
<mindfuq(_at_)zianet(_dot_)com> wrote:
* Google Kreme <gkreme(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> [2004-07-25 09:16]:
But why would we rebuild the From_ timestamp?  Doesn't the MTA replace
that timestamp when it receives the message - in which case the
replaced timestamp should match the one constructed from the received
line?  I just looked at some of my recent mail, and the timestamp on
the From_ line already matches that of the Received line for my
server.

In my case it was a set of MH mailboxes that I had to reconstruct.  I
had 2.5GB of mail with the current date as the FROM_ time stamp.  the
same problem would occur with converting Maildirs as well.

Well, you can adapt the script I posted to scan the Date header
then.  It will be hard because you can't predict the Date: header
format with certitude. Try doing a grep -e "^Date:" on your mail and
just do a quick visual scan to see how the formats stack up.

Here's a sample from my own mailboxes of some differing formats:

List Replies:Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2004 11:24:15 +1300

I grep'd older mail, and got results like that above, but with even
more variation.  Sometimes the date was like 97-10-02, or 5-13-99.

Yep, My pre 2000 mail showed a lot more variation as well.  There is
an RFC, but it was largely ignored until recently.  I even have Date
headers with 13/5/98 style format (day month year no padding).  That's
partly why I said Date: was unreliable.

I guess it does make sense to have procmail scripts that replicate
other tools, because some environments are limited.  Some companies
run procmail in a very restricted shell (smsh or something like that),
and I think formail, procmail, and sendmail are the only commands
available in those environments.

well, my situation is not that dire, but yes, that is a point.

-- 
gkreme at gmail or kreme at kreme or syth at mac
 :: Don't get saucy with me, Bernaise ::

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