Compress Mail via sendmail.cf + rmail script

[meissner at dg_rtp.UUCP]

In article <297 at auspyr.UUCP> joe at auspyr.UUCP (Joe Angelo) writes:
>
>	/* Removed stuff about sendmail.cf mods */
> 
> /usr/local/uubin/uncomprmail contains the following:
> 
> 	# uncompress standard in and send to rmail
> 	# typically, uuxqt will run this with args: user
> 	exec compress -d | rmail $*
> 
> AT the moment, I don't have two BSD 4.2 systems ready to test this.
> Can anyone think of any problems that might occure?

    I think the main problem with this, is compress uses full 8-bit bytes
including nulls, etc.  The sendmail I'm familar with (Data General's AOS/VS
version, and probably DG/UX by inference) restricts itself to 7-bit ASCII.
Also various will mailers choke on NULL's (System V's mailx does, and since
it's based on BSD's Mail, that probably does too).  In general when using
mail, it's is best to use some binary -> ascii converter between compress
and the mailer.  Uuencode/uudecode are the best known.  Note, I just learned
by hard experience that atob that comes with compress will add 0-3 null
bytes to the end of the file.
-- 
	Michael Meissner, Data General
	...mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!meissner