-={ Tuesday, 26 April 2016, 03:16:19.455517199 +1000 }=-

Hey Tony!

 TL> Ahh OK, cool, a decent project then. :)

It could be.  Recently when asked about it I've been suggesting taking it up in
the TUXPOWER echo but so far has taken up the cause.  No big deal to me one way
or the other.

 TL> Yes, I can see that being an issue!

Here is how I am currently planning to handle it;

IFS=$'\034' read -r ftn_DateTime To From Subject msg_body <<< \
  $(sed -n "${1}p" raw_msg.file | tr '\000' '\034')

The above line can be used when replying to an existing message.  For reading
it is much simpler to just translate the nulls and other control codes
depending on the targetted client terminal which is 'linux' in my particular
case.  However splitting the msg into five variables like the example read
command does above would allow special treatment to each of the fields for
display such as ansi colourization.  Also I'd think there are elements in
msg_body that might be better being split off from there such as kludges.

 TL> it's a language I have a fair bit of experience with. :)

If you're really interested then I think TUXPOWER is probably the place to
discuss it in greater detail.  Also I have found that posting scripts in
Fidonet echoes to be a real PIA due to things like tab spaces, line lengths,
etc.  Perhaps something totally different could be discussed and experimented
with there?  That has been my way of thinking about it for some time now but so
far it hasn't mattered any.

Life is good,
Maurice

... Don't cry for me I have vi.
--- GNU bash, version 4.3.42(1)-release (x86_64-atom-linux-gnu)