regexp matching question

[Walter Dnes]

On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 12:58:36AM +0300, Peter wrote

> The problem is that formail fails to properly split certain files
> and I do not know why. I tried to understand the problem but formail
> source is un-maintainable imho. Thus I am trying to work around it
> using my own matcher. That's where the regexp question came in.

  The problem is that there are no "out-of-band" separaters in an mbox
file.  There are certain header-pattern conventions which imply a
separator.  You can run into situations where the text of an email
message contains what looks like headers/separators, even to the most
sophisticated matching algorithm.  It can be hard to separate email body
>From headers<g>.  It's not quite as bad as Microsoft's
"begin loveletter.txt.exe" cockup, but the principle is the same.  If
you subscribe to a procmail or other anti-spam list, where people post
sample email headers, you *WILL* see formail screw up the splits.  This
is one area where maildir format reigns supreme.

  PS, I originally got into linux because I wanted to test procmail
filters on my home machine.  Several years ago (dog's ages) dialup
accounts were 25 or 30 hours per month, with surcharges for extra usage.
I read on the procmail mailing list that some people were running
procmail on linux.  I went out and got a remaindered intro to linux book
with Redhat 5.2 CD's, and installed linux on an old clunker machine.
The rest is history.  BTW, is it possible to search the list archive for
the first email from waltdnes-qazKcTl6WRFWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org all those years ago?  It
would be either late 1999 or sometime in 2000.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>
An infinite number of monkeys pounding away on keyboards will
eventually produce a report showing that Windows is more secure,
and has a lower TCO, than linux.
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