Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 13:04:11 -0500 From: Kutulu <kutulu@kutulu.org> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Stupid Virus going arround. Message-ID: <20011128130411.A3840@pr0n.kutulu.org> In-Reply-To: <20011128163322.GB29228@keyslapper.org>; from leblanc%2Bfreebsd@keyslapper.org on Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 11:33:23AM -0500 References: <022901c17761$b431a510$fd6e34c6@mlevy> <15363.49761.411744.990323@guru.mired.org> <59350765.20011127112338@mindspring.com> <20011127191156.GD452@nabokov.afc.vw.com> <02b101c1776b$e72b38a0$fd6e34c6@mlevy> <15364.23207.328491.247555@guru.mired.org> <20011128070420.GB39649@nabokov.afc.vw.com> <20011128072412.GA20379@keyslapper.org> <20011128022805.A2150@northernbrewer.com> <20011128163322.GB29228@keyslapper.org>
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On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 11:33:23AM -0500, Louis LeBlanc wrote: > On 11/28/01 02:28 AM, Christopher Farley sat at the `puter and typed: > > While we're on the subject of editor/mail user agent interactions: > > What is it that causes all lines in the message body beginning with the > > word 'From' to be indented with a '>'?? > > From from from > > > > ^^ This line was composed with no leading '>', but by the time it gets > > sent to the list, and sent back to my mailbox, it will contain one. > > Only in the response. '>' is a standard quote lead. I notice you're > using Mutt 1.2.5 (You might want to upgrade to the latest mutt-devel). > When your message comes back to you in the list, it should not be > indented, but notice my reply does indent your text. I'm not exactly sure which program is doing it (my gut says it's the local delivery agent but I could be wrong) but it is very typical to prefix any lines which start with From with a single >, or some other character. The reason for this is due to the format of a typical Unix-style local mailfile. These are simply flat text files that contain every mail delivered to a given user, one after the other, in a single file. These files are delimited by the fact that the first header in each mail is the "From:" header. A "From" line somewhere in the middle of any email could confuse some user agents or mail-parsing scripts into thinking a new mail is starting. The solution is to prefix From lines in the body of a mail with some character, > by convention, to make it clear that it's part of the mail not part of the headers. --K To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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