poirier@cs.unc.edu (Dan Poirier) (07/10/90)
I'm trying to use Elm's filter program to stuff uninteresting mail into folders without having to read it. Unfortunately, I'm winding up with no blank lines between the mail messages that filter has delivered to my folders, so my mail program thinks they're one long message. (We have Elm version 2.3 PL 0.) According to the reference manual for BSD mail: The message delivery system always adds a blank line to the end of each message. This blank line must not be deleted. This works properly with a "normal" .forward file, but not when using filter. Looking at the source for filter, it does not add a blank line when putting mail into a folder. Who's supposed to be responsible for this blank line? Is it sendmail, or the program that it passes the message to for delivery (e.g., filter)? Thanks for your help. -- dan poirier, poirier@cs.unc.edu
phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (07/12/90)
I experimented once with having .forward simply pipe mail into cat which was appending it to a file. The blank lines did not appear. Apparently sendmail invokes /usr/ucb/mail to actually save the mail in the mailbox, and that mail program adds the blank lines. In any event, the blank line is NOT supplied to the stdin stream for piped mail. If filter does not add it for folders and if elm requires it, then that sounds enough inconsistent that I wonder how it ever worked. --Phil Howard, KA9WGN-- | Individual CHOICE is fundamental to a free society <phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> | no matter what the particular issue is all about.