Dear Samuel Heywood,
Yes, the standard for SMTP email does use a '.', alone on a line,
as the end-of-message marker. However, the mailers are supposed
to handle it if this occurs in the message text itself. [Without
checking the RFC, I believe this is handled by the mailer sending a
'..' sequence, which is converted back to '.'.]
UUencoded attachments should _never_ have a '.' as the first
character on the line. The only legal characters that can appear as
the first character on the line in a UUencoded attachement are:
'b' (for 'begin')
'M' (for each line of the attachement)
'e' (for 'end')
If you ISP's server is not handling attachments properly, then about
the only thing that you can do is bring their attention to it. You also
might switch to MIME-encoded attachements, though that is less
standardized and some people will have trouble receiving them.
Anthony J. Albert
On 17 Oct 99, at 17:25, Samuel W. Heywood wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> I recall there having been a discussion on the Arachne list a long
> time ago about email messages being truncated by the mail servers
> whenever they encounter a period (".") on a line by itself. The
> dicussion came to a close when someone posted a quotation from an
> eminently authoritative source stating that standardized
> specifications for internet mail servers stipulate that this is
> supposed to happen when a period is encountered on a line by itself.
> The period on a line by itself is supposed to be interpreted as an
> "end of file mark".
>
> In the case of my own ISP, the messages are truncated when the server
> finds a period being the first character of a line of text, even though
> many other characters follow on the same line. This is a problem for
> me sometimes when I try to send UUENCODE attachments. UUENCODE.EXE
> will sometimes encode the file so that sometimes a line of text might
> begin with a period; however, the period is not a line by its own
> lonesome self.
>
> Do you think this is normal that the messages are truncated in this case?
> Or, do you think there might be a problem with my ISP's mail server?
>
> I'm sending an identical message to the Arachne list. Don't know how
> to CC with the mail system used to send this message.
>
> Hope there is someone on these lists who truly understands the
> consternations associated with periods.
>
> Sam Heywood
> .
>
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Anthony J. Albert [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Systems and Software Support Specialist Postmaster
Computer Services - University of Maine, Presque Isle
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