Mark wrote: > In the message dated: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:19:59 BST, > The pithy ruminations from Peter Maydell on > <Re: [Nmh-workers] 128 byte field name limit in NAMESZ breaks scan(1)> were: > => David Levine wrote: > => >Mark wrote: > => >> Messages with very long envelope "From" lines break scan(1). This > => >> behavior happens with nmh 1.3 and 1.2. > => >> > => >> These messages are typically from mailing lists (Yahoo groups, in > => >> particular ). The "Subject" field in the scan listing is displayed > => >> as just an asterisk (*) . > => > => >I've noticed this, too. Glad that you tracked it down, > => >thanks :-) > => > => I think this has been reported on the bug tracking system before. > => (https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?14975) > > Yes, that does sound like the issue I'm seeing. Note that the bug > was opened in 2005. I'm really not a "C" programmer, but it took me > almost as long to read the bug report as it did to increase the > value of NAMESZ. As far as I'm concerned, this is a trivial fix to a > signficant interface issue (ie., not being able to see the fields in > the scan listing). > > => What I want to know is why you have files in your ~/Mail/whatever/ > => with envelope 'From ' lines in the first place. The usual path > => via inc doesn't have them (I think because they are the delimiters > > I do the same thing that's described in the bug report...I use formail & > procmail & rcvstore. I haven't typed "inc" in years. > > => in a mail spool file and so get stripped out as the messages are > => split). So perhaps this bug should be fixed by making whatever > => path you're using to put messages in the folder strip out the > => envelope From as inc does.
Ah, I had procmail configured to insert the 'From ' line, with its -f option. Maybe I don't understand bug #14975, but the 'From ' line that procmail -f inserts does not start with '>'. It starts with 'From ', and if it's longer than 127 bytes, scan complains. > Perhaps, as the bug report from 2005 stated, that would break mail > filtering that actually looks at the "From " line. Why strip it > out...it's data about the mail delivery process, and may have some > value to some other process (spam filtering? mail statistics? random > number generation?). > > Personally, I think that the philosophical argument about whether > tools strip out the "From " line or not is really separate from the > fact that the the scan listing breaks because of an arbitrarily > small value in NAMESZ. The first issue is difficult to resolve (as > evidenced by the 3 year-old bug), while the second issue is trivial > to fix (though maybe not as "pure" as some would want)....but what > do I know? :) I agree. Any objection to raising NAMESZ to 512? David > Mark > > => > => -- PMM > => ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Nmh-workers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
