Re: POP3 and trailing newlines

[Karl Kleinpaste <karl@jprc.com>]

Kai Grossjohann <grossjohann@charly.informatik.uni-dortmund.de> writes:
> I would still like to see some reference that tells me about the mbox
> format.  There was a posting of somebody quoting part of the qmail
> documentation, but somehow I think that the mbox format must be much
> older than qmail and therefore be described somewhere else.

"Use the source, Luke."

Not that the indicated source file is especially handy any more.

I don't know if it has ever been documented /ex post facto/, but mbox
format derives from V6 UNIX' mail.c, circa 1976.  No joke.  Back when
/bin/mail was considered a user interface, the only cross-machine
transport was UUCP (not even an integral part -- as an add-on beyond
standard UNIX as distributed by Western Electric), "mail headers" were
nothing but repeated From_ lines prepended to the message at each UUCP
hop with "remote from <othermachine>" at the end, and ARPANET was
barely a dream even to most researchers.

I have doubts that a formalized documentation of mail.c's habits has
ever existed.  You just have to /know/ what to do with an mbox file.