Re: Lost new mail

Mark Weinstock (woody@ritz.mordor.com)
Thu, 06 Jun 1996 13:03:44 -0500

The problem that *I* have had is with lines with From and a blank line
before it. For example, I subscribe to humor list. I get the digest
version. Sometimes I end up with borken messages in my inbox because there
is a From line with a bliank line before it (Or is it NO blank line?).
Here's an example. The following line starts with the word
>From and should not be broken into a new line. The next line starts with

>From as well, but there is a blank line in front. Sometimes I get these
split into new messages. There has got to be some way to differentiate a
new message other than the From line.

In article <Igwsxou+SqSG090yn@login.eunet.no>, you wrote:
>In article <WSpsxY9ICZZO089yn@ritz.mordor.com>,
>w2jc@ritz.mordor.com (-) wrote:
>
>> } Um, I'm afraid that I do see his point here. I have used uqwk for about
>> } two years now, and have never experienced this problem. Granted, lines
>> } beginning with From get a > in front, but that is a minor problem.
>
>> If there is a > in front of the From, then you will NOT have the problem.
>> The problem occurs when a sender does not put > in front of From when
>> there is a blank line just before the From.
>
>But that's precisely it. The sender did *not* put it there. I've sent
>mail to myself and seen that the returned message gets it even if I did
>not type it in.
>
>> What happens when the messages gets split is that the second part does
>> not have a valid set of header lines, and so the pointer which would
>> tell Yarn (or other decoder of uqwk/soup packages) how big the next
>> message is can be some random pointer size, being whatever the first two
>> bytes of the ascii text of the first line of the broken section contains.
>> This can, apparently, appear to be very very large. And Yarn 'import'
>> will read that 'size pointer' and put that many bytes into the message.
>
>But there is no indication of the message size in the header. The
>four-byte integer in front in the SOUP packet is added by uqwk, and the
>only way it *can* calculate the size is by counting the bytes from one
>>From line to the next -- or until the end of the file if it is the last
>message. I don't doubt you. I just wonder where that erroneous message
>size comes from.
>
>> Are you SURE that you have not received any mail with a blank line
>> followed by a From at the start of the next line? Perhaps he HAS
>> changed uqwk and your system has the new version? :)
>
>I'm sure. It was like that when I saw your message. Any instance of
>>From at the beginning of a line got > in front, and I'm sure that not
>all posters are thoughtful enough to add that.
>
>Yngvar
>

-- 
Mark                woody@ritz.mordor.com      mw4j@andrew.cmu.edu
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Created using Yarn version 0.90 on Jun 06, 1996
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