[comp.sources.d] Poll on shar formats: dot at beginning of line

chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) (06/06/88)

In article <4838@teddy.UUCP> jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) writes:
>For some reason, people assume that a dot beginning a line is a
>"dangerous sequence":  It is NOT!  What they are thinking of is a dot
>ALONE on a line:  This causes some mailers to terminate reading the
>mail.  It is silly to prefix EVERY line starting with a dot (nroff
>source) because of this.

I have received mail (nroff/troff files) where all the leading
dots were doubled, because some broken SMTP server did not unquote
them.

Leading periods do constitute a `dangerous sequence' in some broken
mailers.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris