-={ 2021-04-12 01:41:38.694142067+00:00 }=-

Hey August!


 AA> I thought the concern was that some dupe-check implementations
 AA> only use the "serialno" part.

You could be right about that but I was under the impression that the entire MSGID is used.  I say we give it a try using the [:alnum:] regex which I've taken the liberty of doing in this reply.  In my case I am using /dev/urandom to generate the random characters in conjunction with tr and the [:alnum:] regex to strip out 8 suitable characters as shown in the MSGID of this reply to you.  It certainly doesn't add that much drag but I am going to reserve judgement on that once I try it out on the slowest cpu I have running at the moment.  It is busy upgrading itself to the newest gcc-10.3.0 release so it might be awhile before I can give it a proper test.  Offhand I think your idea might be best all things considered.  I still think my idea is the ultimate but I have serious doubts about getting it adopted any time soon.  Definetly something we have time to ponder ... or at least I do.  :-)

 AA> And, now that we've totally bored the vast number of ASIAN_LINK
 AA> listeners, we should probably move to something less technical.

Bah!  I say if they are bothered by it then they should speak up instead of just lurking.  Besides I think we need to test your idea to see what constitutes
valid characters in the serial number.  Once we get a better handle on what works and what doesn't as far as acceptable characters are concerned we can safely
drop this subject.  Offhand I think this might be a keeper.  Also I want to try it on the EuroPoint once I get confirmation about it's validity.  Only one way
to find out.

Sound like a plan?

Life is good,
Maurice

... Sprec ofter embe o¨res monnes weld‘de ¨onne emb ¨ine agna.
    Speak more often about other people's good deeds than about your own.
--- GNU bash, version 5.1.4(1)-release (x86_64-motorshed-linux-gnu)