[Patches] Unix Mailboxes don't work quite right.

M.-A. Lemburg mal@lemburg.com
Sun, 18 Jun 2000 13:27:42 +0200


Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> 
> MAL wrote:
> > > If people want the original behavior for whatever reason, they can
> > > override it, but this change would make Python much more compatible with
> > > mailers, etc.
> >
> > Why not fix the RE to also match the messages you are seeing
> > your mail box file instead of removing the check completely ?
> 
> maybe because it doesn't really make much sense to look for either
> "From ", or "From " followed by something else?

Huh ? I meant changing the RE to accept more date formats...
 
> also see:
> 
> http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/demo/content-length.html
> 
>     Essentially the only safe way to parse that file format is to consider
>     all lines which begin with the characters "From '' (From-space), which
>     are preceded by a blank line or beginning-of-file, to be the division
>     between messages. /.../
> 
>     Some people will tell you that you should do stricter parsing on those
>     lines: check for user names and dates and so on. They are wrong.

Hmm, that's a rather strong opinion... but the guy in question
should know, so I'll change my -1 to +1 :-)

PS: Didn't know there was a whole newsgroup devoted to mail
headers.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
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