On Tue, Apr 02, 2002 at 12:46:36PM -0600 I heard the voice of
David DeSimone, and lo! it spake thus:
> 
> Mutt chooses to be picker about the "From " syntax because some mailers
> don't properly escape a "From " that is inside the body of the message.

Well.

Mutt doesn't escape "^From " in the body either when it writes, since it
always writes with Content-Length: headers.

There's no way to win with mbox.  You escape From_'s, you mangle the
message, which can do things like screw up crypto signatures, and the
various other similar problems.  You don't escape them and rely totally
on Content-Length:, you get yourself into trouble if the file is edited
manually or otherwise changed without updating Content-Length to match.
Say I change stuff in the middle of a message, and the last line is "From
something <date>".  If I don't adjust the Content-Length:, depending on
how smart the parser is, it'll either:

- Puke when (end-of-header+content-length) isn't the start of a new
  message
- Search forward from(end-of-header+content-length) to try and
  figure out where the next message is, in which case it'll either get an
  extra empty message (my From) if I added stuff, or skip over a whole
  message and include it in the current, if I deleted stuff.
- Search forward AND backward, in which case, who knows?




-- 
Matthew Fuller     (MF4839)     |    [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unix Systems Administrator      |    [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Specializing in FreeBSD         |    http://www.over-yonder.net/

"The only reason I'm burning my candle at both ends, is because I
      haven't figured out how to light the middle yet"

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