Hi Rob,

On 2019-08-18 17:37:31, you wrote to All:

 RS> FTS-1 is ambiguous about whether or not the last character of these
 RS> fields may be used or not. In other words, if a "to" or
"from" name is
 RS> exactly 36 characters, is it legal to use all 36 characters and *not*
 RS> include a null terminator in a stored message? It is a fixed-length
 RS> field after-all, so a terminator should not be needed if all 36
 RS> characters are used. Similarly, would it be possible to use all 72
 RS> characters for a message subject? This would be consistent with how
 RS> the "password" field in a packet header is stored (no
null terminator
 RS> included for full-length passwords).

 RS> "Packed Messages" use variable length header fields, so
even full-length
 RS> header fields (e.g. a 36-character to or from name) would still require a
 RS> null terminator. But the spec is not clear:

 RS>               |                    subject                    |
 RS>               ~                  max 72 bytes                 ~
 RS>               |                null terminated                |

 RS> It's not clear if that "null" is *included* in the max 72
bytes, or not.
 RS> :-(

I think it is clear, and included in the 72 bytes.

 RS> How does *your* implementation handle these fields? What would happen
 RS> if you received a Stored Message where byte 71 (the 72nd byte) of the
 RS> "subject" was non-null? Or if you received a packet that included a
 RS> 72-character subject followed by a null? Both of these conditions do
 RS> not appear to violate FTS-1, but I'm not sure how other programmers
 RS> have interpetted these specs over the years.

I checked the fmail source: it reads a maximum of 72 bytes (untill and
including a NULL) from the pkt file for the subject. It doesn't care if
byte 71 isn't a NULL (when the maximum of 72 bytes are read), but it forces
it to NULL before further processing. So effectively limiting the subject
to 71 characters. If the byte after 72 subject characters would be NULL, it
regards that as the 1st byte of the next field. So that would mean a
message body of 0 characters.

Bye, Wilfred.

--- FMail-lnx64 2.1.0.18-B20170815