From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/9925 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Karl Kleinpaste Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: POP3 and trailing newlines Date: 13 Feb 1997 15:13:09 -0500 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035149878 21361 80.91.224.250 (20 Oct 2002 21:37:58 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 21:37:58 +0000 (UTC) Return-Path: Original-Received: from ifi.uio.no (0@ifi.uio.no [129.240.64.2]) by deanna.miranova.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA01762 for ; Thu, 13 Feb 1997 12:35:12 -0800 Original-Received: from pocari-sweat.jprc.com (karl@pocari-sweat.jprc.com [207.86.147.217]) by ifi.uio.no with ESMTP (8.6.11/ifi2.4) id for ; Thu, 13 Feb 1997 21:13:11 +0100 Original-Received: (from karl@localhost) by pocari-sweat.jprc.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA22683; Thu, 13 Feb 1997 15:13:09 -0500 Original-To: ding@ifi.uio.no In-Reply-To: Kai Grossjohann's message of 13 Feb 1997 19:38:30 +0100 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:9925 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:9925 Kai Grossjohann 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 " 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.