Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!purdue!umd5!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Poll on shar formats: dot at beginning of line
Message-ID: <11826@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 6 Jun 88 03:03:37 GMT
References: <868@fig.bbn.com> <1494@microsoft.UUCP> <4838@teddy.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 16

In article <4838@teddy.UUCP> jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) writes:
>For some reason, people assume that a dot beginning a line is a
>"dangerous sequence":  It is NOT!  What they are thinking of is a dot
>ALONE on a line:  This causes some mailers to terminate reading the
>mail.  It is silly to prefix EVERY line starting with a dot (nroff
>source) because of this.

I have received mail (nroff/troff files) where all the leading
dots were doubled, because some broken SMTP server did not unquote
them.

Leading periods do constitute a `dangerous sequence' in some broken
mailers.
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris