Re: bug in mailread.rb, and: proposal for Mail#to_s

Wybo Dekker wrote:


> mailread separates mail messages looking for /^From /.
> This is incorrect, because message bodies may contain lines beginning with
>
> From like this mail does.

I agree.  It has puzzled me why it's there at all.


> So the regexp should be, I think, something
> like: /^From .*? \w{3} \w{3} [\d ]{2} \d\d:\d\d:\d\d \d{4}/

If it's necessary, that would be better but is this related to
mail messages or to some intermediate mail software which adds
a 'From ' line.

I notice that (e.g.) http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/ruby/ruby-talk/168809
have 'From ' lines but I'm unsure whose convenience they serve.

mailread reads to EoF, apart from this anomaly, and doesn't have
a mechanism for creating multiple objects from a stream, so
reading from a stream of 3 messages would collect the first
message only.  Granted, the file position would be set at the
line following the 'From ' line which caused the break (ready for
the next message) but that seems crude, IMHO.

Reading from a stream of arbitrarily combined messages should, I think,
be handled by the mailread user (that's us) who should be familiar
with their particular stream format.  Perhaps those messages should
not have been collated into a stream in the first place?
(I'm suspecting that discrete messages are being piped through?
 If that's the case, it's not mailread's problem.)

- I load individual messages from a stream into StringIOs.

So I vote to /remove/ that split altogether regardless of how
commonly it occurs unless it's an accepted standard.
That also fixes the bug.


> I also propose a to_s method, which converts the Mail object to a
> (possibly edited) copy of the original mail message.
>

With respect, Wybo, 5 different people might produce 5 unique
#to_s methods.  So do that :)

In your version, you're adding this mystery 'From ' line as if it's
some kind of standard.  Maybe someone will educate me?

./mailread.rb:59:in `to_s': uninitialized constant Mail::DateTime (NameError)


daz