Hey Carol!

 CS> Neither, that was what there was then!

Probably just as well.  I did find some documentation and it claimed there is
(was?) no ^A prefix on AREA which matches what I see today.  I have an old pkt
mark sent me way back when for backwards compatibility testing purposes and
near as I can tell there are no ^A prefixes on any of the +180 messages in that
raw pkt.

Using the subject's null character terminator I get this;

-={ grep -Pao "\x00AREA" ./testing/E6614010.PKT | wc -l }=-
186

whereas a prefixed ^A shows;

-={ grep -Pao "\x01AREA" ./testing/E6614010.PKT | wc -l }=-
0

The first message in that raw pkt gives the FTN datetime stamp of "26 May 94 
14:39:15" which is the same year as the latest version of CONFMAIL that I can
find.  I found nothing older than that.  I am guessing there is an archive of a
prior version somewhere.

Life is good,
Maurice

... Don't cry for me I have vi.
--- GNU bash, version 4.4.19(1)-release (x86_64-silvermont-linux-gnu)