[net.followup] The Bug lives

ljdickey@watmath.UUCP (Lee Dickey) (05/21/84)

>                                                            Four of the mes-
> sages I read today were completely blank (of course, there were respnses to
> some very interesting points in the messages, of which I could decipher no-
> thing.) 

I have heard rumours that certain bug killer lines actually invoke other bugs.

Any comments?
-- 
  Lee Dickey, University of Waterloo.  (ljdickey@watmath.UUCP)
 	... {allegra, decvax} !watmath!ljdickey

mp@whuxle.UUCP (Mark Plotnick) (05/21/84)

Lee Dickey asks which "bug killer" lines actually invoke bugs.  Here are
some bugs I know of:

	- if the first line of your article contains a colon followed by
	  a blank, 2.10 news may interpret it as a header line,
	  thus the line may disappear from the message body.
	  Presumably, everybody who has 2.10 has either fixed the bug or
	  converted to 2.10.1.
	- if the first line of the article begins with whitespace, it and
	  several lines following it may disappear.  A fix
	  to header.c has been out for awhile.  >>>Those folks who write bug killer
	  lines that begin with whitespace are sure to elicit the bug!<<<
And some more problems related to headers:
	- if the References header line (or any other line in the header)
	  gets too long, it may spill over into the body of the message.
	- if your site name in the Message-ID field ends with anything other
	  than ".UUCP", and if the message passes through the
	  wjh12->n44a->rna->cmcl2 machines,
	  it will reappear with a Message-ID that DOES end in .UUCP,
	  thus producing a duplicate message that the news software will
	  not detect.

So, to be safe, you DON'T have to begin an article with an extraneous line.
Just make sure the first line begins at the left margin and doesn't
contain a colon followed by a blank.
	Mark Plotnick
	whuxle!mp

dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) (05/22/84)

In addition to the list posted by Mark Plotnick (whuxle!mp), if
an article contains a single "." on a line by itself, some sites
will not transmit anything beyond that line. (The dot is a terminator
in certain mailers.)

It follows that "." is a singularly poor choice of "bug-killer line".

Dave Sherman
Toronto
-- 

 dave at Toronto (CSnet)
 {allegra,cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo}!utcsrgv!dave

cem@intelca.UUCP (05/24/84)

Example: This Line


Yes, on some systems putting a word followed by a colon as the first item
on a line causes news to through it into the top. Not encountered often
but seen a few times around here. Note that if Example: is in the text of
the message your version of netnews distinguishs(sp?) it correctly.

					--Chuck

gds@mit-eddie.UUCP (Greg Skinner) (05/24/84)

Actually, the sequence which is used as end-of-message is
<crlf>.<crlf>

This is used by SMTP (for the ARPAnet) to terminate mail messages.  
-- 
                                                  [This space available
                                                   for rent.]

Greg Skinner (White Gold Wielder)
{decvax!genrad, eagle!mit-vax, whuxle, ihnp4}!mit-eddie!gds

And he who wields white wild magic gold is a paradox ...