[comp.mail.elm] ELM 2.3 PL11 doesn't like Daylight Savings Time

devet@wsinis03.info.win.tue.nl (Arjan de Vet) (02/15/91)

I was using ELM 2.3 PL11 to read usenet news stored in mail format, when I
discovered that some folders were reported being 'Corrupt' by ELM. After
deleting all kind of headers, special symbols etcetera I finally tried
deleting the 'DST' from 'MET DST' (Middle European Time Daylight Savings
Time) and then everything worked just fine. This 'DST' is present in the
'From ' line.

Has anyone noticed this before when using ELM for reading usenet news stored
in mail folders?

--
Arjan de Vet                         | E-mail : devet@win.tue.nl
Dept. of Math. and Computing Science | tel: + 31 40 473705
Eindhoven University of Technology   |      + 31 40 472733
the Netherlands                      | fax: + 31 40 436685

ckaye@hemel.bull.co.uk (Chris Kaye) (03/03/91)

devet@wsinis03.info.win.tue.nl (Arjan de Vet) writes:

>I was using ELM 2.3 PL11 to read usenet news stored in mail format, when I
>discovered that some folders were reported being 'Corrupt' by ELM. After
>deleting all kind of headers, special symbols etcetera I finally tried
>deleting the 'DST' from 'MET DST' (Middle European Time Daylight Savings
>Time) and then everything worked just fine. This 'DST' is present in the
>'From ' line.

>Has anyone noticed this before when using ELM for reading usenet news stored
>in mail folders?

Whilst investigating a different problem, I built and ran ELM 2.3 PL11 with
debug configured (see Makefile in src). When I receive any mail with a timezone
in the 'From ' line, a message is reported in the debugfile complaining about
the timezone. The problem appears to be a bug in function get_unix_date() in
addr_util.c. This function calls tz_lookup whilst pointing to the timezone in
the 'From ' line. Unfortunately, tz_lookup assumes that the timezone is the
only thing left in the buffer, which is all well and good when it is called
from parse_arpa_date(), but not from get_unix_date(). The problem described by
Arjan de Vet also appears to be a bug in the same file (addr_util.c). This time
the function is real_from() which can only deal with 7 and 8 fielded 'From '
lines. Unfortunately, DST timezones generate _9_ fielded 'From ' lines!

>--
>Arjan de Vet                         | E-mail : devet@win.tue.nl
>Dept. of Math. and Computing Science | tel: + 31 40 473705
>Eindhoven University of Technology   |      + 31 40 472733
>the Netherlands                      | fax: + 31 40 436685
--
-----------------------------+
Chris.Kaye@hemel.bull.co.uk  |
Bull HN Ltd., Maxted Road,   |
Hemel Hempstead, HP2 7DZ, UK |
-----------------------------+

jan@unikla.ASK.SE (Jan S{ll) (03/04/91)

In article <1991Mar2.182122.27698@hemel.bull.co.uk> ckaye@hemel.bull.co.uk (Chris Kaye) writes:
>devet@wsinis03.info.win.tue.nl (Arjan de Vet) writes:
>
>>[Text deleted]
>
>>Has anyone noticed this before when using ELM for reading usenet news stored
>>in mail folders?
>
>[Text deleted]

The same thing happends when I started to use an International versions of SCO
Xenix. The problem is rn/trn that uses 'date' command to build the arguments to
'mbox.saver'. This can get the wrong results if one uses for example swedish
date format: M}n 04 Mar 07:58:36 met 1991

To get this right I use a schript that inwokes trn/rn instead of inwoking them
direct

:
# Start rn in english
LANG=english_us.ascii
export LANG
rn.b
-- 
=======================================================================
Jan Saell, ASK (Administration & SystemKonsult AB), Kumla, Sweden
                                                 Voice: INT+46 19 82515
jan@ask.se or mcvax!sunic!unikla!jan             FAX:   INT+46 19 60651

hbergh@oracle.nl (Herbert van den Bergh) (03/13/91)

It's not just PL11 that acts this way. It has been in ELM longer.
If you don't want to run rn with a different TZ, put the following two
lines in your .profile:

MBOXSAVER='%X/mbox.saver %A %P %c %a %B %C "%b" "From %T %`TZ=GMT date`"'
export MBOXSAVER

This will make sure the dates in the mailbox are in GMT and without
DST.

-- 
Herbert van den Bergh,		Email:	hbergh@oracle.nl, hbergh@oracle.com
ORACLE Europe
--