[net.unix-wizards] Problem with Michael Cohen's header-cleanup script

v.wales%ucla-locus@sri-unix.UUCP (06/23/83)

From:            Rich Wales <v.wales@ucla-locus>

A small problem with Michael Cohen <ucscc!psych36@Berkeley>'s "awk"
script to clean up message headers is that lines beginning with ">From"
(which his script deletes) are not necessarily header lines.  In par-
ticular, several mail systems "out there" evidently prepend a ">" to
any line in the BODY of an incoming message which begins with "From"
(maybe only if the preceding line is blank, I'm not sure).

-- Rich

edhall%rand-unix@sri-unix.UUCP (06/23/83)

Indeed, many mailers (especially older ones) add `>' in front of any pre-
existing line that starts with `From', whether in the header or body.  This
is because some mail programs use the `From' line to define boundries
between messages, and look only at the first five letters.  The V7 mail
program is this way.  In fact, if mail has a path through a system with
such a mailer, it may well have the `>''s attatched even if the source
and destination systems are `smarter'.

There are more Vanilla V7 systems lurking about than you might think...

		-Ed