-={ Thursday, 28 April 2016, 10:37:56.896639632 +1000 }=-

Hey Tony!

 TL> It takes me a little while to understand the nuances of scripts.

Sounds great.  I had to liberate the posted parts from a bash function file
that I source from other script(s) so I fully appreciate your point.  ;-)

Anyhow take your time and if you have any questions/suggestions I am all ears.

 TL> but do we want to keep track of any individual components such as
 TL> headers, kludge lines, etc?

Yes we do.  That is the goal and other than possible splitting of the
kludges from the msg_body (fifth field) I believe the current format is a
very good foundation.  We may wish to translate the nulls to a more
suitable control code, such as the aptly named 'field seperator' (aka 0x1c)
but gawk doesn't seem to mind nulls if indeed we find gawk to be a keeper
in scripting.  bash string handling has improved over the years and might
be fun to replace sed and tr calls ... if indeed we want to.

 TL> you might need to modify the format a bit

No doubt.  Still I think it is a solid foundation to build from but I will
wait for your later assessment.

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)