RE: why isn't command expansion deferred?? (stupid question probably)

[Paul Smith]

On Sun, 2010-01-31 at 17:04 -0800, Mark Galeck (CW) wrote:
> I see, thank you for explaining!  How does your server know I reply to
> an "unrelated thread", when I change the subject line??

Only the weakest email clients do threading via the subject line: it's
far too arbitrary and error-prone :-).

If your mail client has an option to view all headers, or view the
message source unfiltered (I know things like Microsoft Outlook cannot
do this) you should take a look sometime.  There are LOTS of very
interesting headers in a typical email message.

One of them is a Message-ID: header which contains a globally unique
string which identifies this email from all others.

Another is a References: header, which contains a list of Message-ID
values that your message is replying to.  Whenever you reply, the new
message you created contains in a References: header which is a copy of
the References header from the message you're replying to, plus the
message-ID of the message you're replying to, so it grows as threads are
created.

This is how all right-thinking email clients construct threads.

Cheers!
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