gamiddle@watmath.waterloo.edu (Guy Middleton) (01/19/91)
/bin/mail apparently always stops reading input when it sees "." on a line by iteslf, and cannot be told to do otherwise. This agrees with the man page, but I think it is wrong anyway. It makes it impossible for a MIPS system to use the SMTP transparency procedure described in RFC 821, section 4.5.2. In an SMTP dialogue, EOF is indicated by "<CR><LF>.<CR><LF>". "." on a line by itself is sent by using two dots, one of which is discarded by the receiver: "<CR><LF>..<CR><LF>". Once the extra dots have been discarded, the message is given (by sendmail) to /bin/mail for local delivery. /bin/mail truncates the message. If, in sendmail.cf, I make the local mailer also use the dot-transparency algorithm (by using the "X" mailer flag), periods are also doubled on input to /bin/mail. Unfortunately, /bin/mail does not strip periods, so mailed troff input files end up having things like "..pp" in them. Have I missed something? Is there some trick I have overlooked to get around this? -Guy Middleton, University of Waterloo gamiddleton@watmath.waterloo.edu (+1 519 885 1211 x3472) gamiddleton@watmath.uwaterloo.ca