[gnu.emacs.bug] Time zone problem in rmail macros

andys@ulysses.att.com (05/17/89)

When incoming mail has a time zone of the form +nnnn, rmail goes into
an infinite loop, creating empty preambles in the RMAIL file.  The symptom
seen by the user is nothing happening, with an occasional flash of activity
from garbage collector on the bottom line.

Such time zone specifications are legal rfc822 specifications, as evidenced
by the following paragraph from rfc822

     
     Time zone may be indicated in several ways.  "UT" is Univer-
     sal  Time  (formerly called "Greenwich Mean Time"); "GMT" is per-
     mitted as a reference to Universal Time.  The  military  standard
     uses  a  single  character for each zone.  "Z" is Universal Time.
     "A" indicates one hour earlier, and "M" indicates 12  hours  ear-
     lier;  "N"  is  one  hour  later, and "Y" is 12 hours later.  The
     letter "J" is not used.  The other remaining two forms are  taken
     from ANSI standard X3.51-1975.  One allows explicit indication of
     the amount of offset from UT; the other uses  common  3-character
     strings for indicating time zones in North America.

This bug was tickled by a lot of foreign mail from a mailing list that I
just subscribed to.

Andy Sherman
--
Andy Sherman/AT&T Bell Laboratories/Murray Hill, NJ           *NEW ADDRESS*
AUDIBLE:  (201) 582-5928                                      *NEW PHONE*
READABLE: andys@ulysses.ATT.COM  or att!ulysses!andys         *NEW EMAIL*
The views and opinions are my own.  Who else would want them? *OLD DISCLAIMER*