Your message dated Thu, 9 Nov 2006 01:34:55 +0100 (CET)
with message-id <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
and subject line Bug#397488: procmailrc with DOS line terminators deletes mails
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--- Begin Message ---
Package: procmail
Version: 3.22-11
Severity: important
After editing my .procmailrc with wordpad.exe on Windows the line endings
were silently changed to DOS style. After that procmail deleted ALL received
emails without any message in log file.
This is absolutely not acceptable. DOS line endings should never cause this
severe loss of data.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: mipsel (mips)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.16-promise33
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)
Versions of packages procmail depends on:
ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-22sarge4 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
-- no debconf information
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
On Wed, 8 Nov 2006, Peter Niss wrote:
> Santiago Vila schrieb:
> > Ah, but then you have not provided what I asked!
> >
> > Why do you think procmail is not doing what is told to do?
> > It is not a procmail bug that the user writes an "unreasonable" .procmailrc,
> > and procmail is not supposed to read your mind.
>
> Procmail should read my mind so far that procmail should know that when
> I write CRLF codes I mean "new line". That were reasonable. If procmail
> does not do that, I consider this a bug. From the human point of view it
> is a trivial mistake to accidently write CRLF line endings (actually
> wordpad.exe is buggy, but that's a different story).
>
> So there are three options now: 1.) We say wordpad.exe is buggy and file
> a report to microsoft and wait 10 years until it is fixed. 2.) We say
> procmail is buggy and fix it. 3.) We say the user is stupid and accept
> procmails interpretation though we all know it is a false interpretation.
>
> It's a usability question IMO.
I disagree with your three options.
1) wordpad.exe is not necessarily buggy. It's just not adequate for
editing a Unix file. You can't say there are not enough editors
in Debian to choose from.
2) A bug is when program and documentation disagree. The manpage
says procmail is 8-bit clean, which is consistent with the fact
that character 13 (decimal) is treated as any other character.
If you think this is a bug, you are welcome to contact the author,
but as I do not consider it as a bug, I'm not willing to bother him
with this in the name of Debian.
3) The user is not necessarily stupid, he has just to realize that in
Unix, tools do what they are told to do, even if it means following
what we told them to the letter.
I would keep this bug open if there were actual data loss, but it's
not the case.
--- End Message ---
