From: utzoo!decvax!microsof!uw-beave!jim Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Title: Re: Bugs in 4.1bsd mailers Article-I.D.: uw-beave.275 Posted: Wed Jan 5 09:17:54 1983 Received: Thu Jan 6 20:20:48 1983 References: watcgl.95 From: uw-beave!microsof!decvax!utzoo!watmath!watcgl!dmmartindale Several comments about uw-beaver!jim's suggestions on how to handle errors in /bin/mail: Do NOT change /bin/mail to do "exit(pclose(rmf) >> 8);" If uux dies from any sort of signal, this fact is indicated by the lower 8 bits of the return status and the upper 8 bits are zero, and you DON'T want to indicate normal exit in this case. ... Dave Martindale's assessment of /bin/mail looks right to me. As I said, I wasn't advocating that you go right out and change your sources, since I hadn't tested the modifications I proposed. I was just curious as to why the code was wrong and whether anyone had fixed it. The moral is that /bin/mail tries to do too many things and isn't very good at any of them. It is a user interface, a local mailer, and a uucp mailer. What we do is use /bin/mail for local delivery and a different program for uucp delivery. The uucp mailer checks to make sure a site exists before doing the uux, and checks the exit status on return just to make sure.