Re: [VM] searching in mime encoded email

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2012-01-19, John Hein <address@hidden> wrote:
> I hope vm can handle binary bodies okay.  I suspect there may be some
> edge cases (e.g., embedded '\n\nFrom ' in binary data - using something
> other than mbox format could help there).

Nobody should be using vanilla mbox format - it was obviously an appalling
idea even when it was invented, and it's absurd that anybody's still
using it now.
I use MMDF format, which is less fragile; but can still be bitten by
having its message delimiters ("\001\001\001\001\n") appear within
message text.
So yes, if one uses such primitive formats, one has to worry about
this.
It would be better if we could force everybody to use a format with
content-length, or file-per-message; but content-length is also
fragile, as a single error breaks things badly.

> But there are ramifications to having raw binary data in email
> messages beyond the scope of vm.  Imagine reading a message with raw
> binary data in an xterm with emacs -nw - see your terminal window go

Most people don't insert random binary junk into the text of their
messages, so why would you be reading non-text data?

> catty-wompus with the right combination of bytes.  Or through a telnet
> session.  Also trying to send non 7-bit ascii in a message through
> some mailers might cause issues (possibly less so in this day and

I'd be surprised if there are any mailers left that don't
automatically handle 8bit mail.