P3D Re: PSSP talk: barriers to entry (really ">")

[Andrew Scott Beals <bandy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, partially right.  It does not come from an RFC.  It is a hold-over
from Bell Labs, since they used "From " at the beginning of a line to
indicate the beginning of the next mail message in the inbound mail file.

So, in order to avoid confusing the mailer, any lines beginning with "From "
would have a > prepended to them.

This was later used to help show UUCP paths, but this is digging back into 
ancient ancient history.

Needless to say, most unix systems still store your inbound mail in a flat
file and need some sort of separator, so they still do the > thing.  

On Tue, 23 Mar 1999 16:10:13 -0700, fj834@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Dr. George A. Themelis) wrote:
In message <199903232309.SAA07898@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> thou hast written:
>>>From the halls of Montezuma
>>from far and wide
>>From
>>
>>The mailer will add ">" to the first example, but not to either of the
>>others, the second because it isn't capitalized and the third because
>>no text follows.
>>
>>	-Greg W. (gjw@xxxxxxxxxx)
>
>WOW!  What a neat answer to big mystery for me!!!  Thanks Greg!
>
>George
>


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