Re: Recognize mbox files?

[Reiner Steib]

On Mon, Feb 09 2009, Chong Yidong wrote:

> Richard M Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Is it reliable enough to recognize mbox files
>> that we could visit them automatically in Rmail mode?

Please don't.

> I don't think so.  Mbox files are lines that begin with "From ",
> separated by arbitrary data.  There's not enough information to
> autodetect them.

More important, rmail-mode seems to modify the file.  Dunno if this is
a bug or a feature of rmail-mode.

$ cat [...]/Incoming* > mbox-test.orig 
$ cp -p mbox-test.orig mbox-test.rmail
$ emacs -Q mbox-test.rmail -f rmail-mode # C-x C-s   C-x C-c
$ diff -U1 mbox-test.orig mbox-test.rmail > mbox-test.diff

,----[ mbox-test.diff ]
| --- mbox-test.orig    2009-02-09 22:13:31.000000000 +0100
| +++ mbox-test.rmail   2009-02-09 22:14:16.000000000 +0100
| @@ -1001,12 +1001,12 @@
| [...]
| -> Viele Grüße
| +> Viele Grüße
|  > 
| [...]
| @@ -4434,2 +4434,3 @@
|  X-Loop: address@hidden
| +X-RMAIL-ATTRIBUTES: --------
`----

(As I wont use Rmail, I don't care much, but ...) it seems that Rmail
recoded iso-8859-1 encoded messages to utf-8 without adjusting the
Content-Type header so the resulting mbox file is no longer correct.
(Modifying the Content-Type would also be a no-no IMHO.)

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
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