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-.TH s/qmail: mbox 5
-.SH "NAME"
-mbox \- file containing mail messages
-.SH "INTRODUCTION"
-The most common format for storage of mail messages is
-.I mbox
-format.
-An
-.I mbox
-is a single file containing zero or more mail messages.
-.SH "MESSAGE FORMAT"
-A message encoded in
-.I mbox
-format begins with a
-.B From_
-line, continues with a series of
-.B \fRnon-\fBFrom_
-lines,
-and ends with a blank line.
-A
-.B From_
-line means any line that begins with the characters
-F, r, o, m, space:
-
-.EX
- From god@heaven.af.mil Sat Jan 3 01:05:34 1996
-.br
- Return-Path: <god@heaven.af.mil>
-.br
- Delivered-To: djb@silverton.berkeley.edu
-.br
- Date: 3 Jan 1996 01:05:34 -0000
-.br
- From: God <god@heaven.af.mil>
-.br
- To: djb@silverton.berkeley.edu (D. J. Bernstein)
-.br
-
-.br
- How's that mail system project coming along?
-.br
-
-.EE
-
-The final line is a completely blank line (no spaces or tabs).
-Notice that blank lines may also appear elsewhere in the message.
-
-The
-.B From_
-line always looks like
-.B From
-.I envsender
-.I date
-.IR moreinfo .
-.I envsender
-is one word, without spaces or tabs;
-it is usually the envelope sender of the message.
-.I date
-is the delivery date of the message.
-It always contains exactly 24 characters in
-.B asctime
-format.
-.I moreinfo
-is optional; it may contain arbitrary information.
-
-Between the
-.B From_
-line and the blank line is a message in RFC 822 format,
-as described in
-.BR qmail-header(5) ,
-subject to
-.B >From quoting
-as described below.
-.SH "HOW A MESSAGE IS DELIVERED"
-Here is how a program appends a message to an
-.I mbox
-file.
-
-It first creates a
-.B From_
-line given the message's envelope sender and the current date.
-If the envelope sender is empty (i.e., if this is a bounce message),
-the program uses
-.B MAILER-DAEMON
-instead.
-If the envelope sender contains spaces, tabs, or newlines,
-the program replaces them with hyphens.
-
-The program then copies the message, applying
-.B >From quoting
-to each line.
-.B >From quoting
-ensures that the resulting lines are not
-.B From_
-lines:
-the program prepends a
-.B >
-to any
-.B From_
-line,
-.B >From_
-line,
-.B >>From_
-line,
-.B >>>From_
-line,
-etc.
-
-Finally the program appends a blank line to the message.
-If the last line of the message was a partial line,
-it writes two newlines;
-otherwise it writes one.
-.SH "HOW A MESSAGE IS READ"
-A reader scans through an
-.I mbox
-file looking for
-.B From_
-lines.
-Any
-.B From_
-line marks the beginning of a message.
-The reader should not attempt to take advantage of the fact that every
-.B From_
-line (past the beginning of the file)
-is preceded by a blank line.
-
-Once the reader finds a message,
-it extracts a (possibly corrupted) envelope sender
-and delivery date out of the
-.B From_
-line.
-It then reads until the next
-.B From_
-line or end of file, whichever comes first.
-It strips off the final blank line
-and
-deletes the
-quoting of
-.B >From_
-lines and
-.B >>From_
-lines and so on.
-The result is an RFC 822 message.
-.SH "COMMON MBOX VARIANTS"
-There are many variants of
-.I mbox
-format.
-The variant described above is
-.I mboxrd
-format, popularized by Rahul Dhesi in June 1995.
-
-The original
-.I mboxo
-format quotes only
-.B From_
-lines, not
-.B >From_
-lines.
-As a result it is impossible to tell whether
-
-.EX
- From: djb@silverton.berkeley.edu (D. J. Bernstein)
-.br
- To: god@heaven.af.mil
-.br
-
-.br
- >From now through August I'll be doing beta testing.
-.br
- Thanks for your interest.
-.EE
-
-was quoted in the original message.
-An
-.I mboxrd
-reader will always strip off the quoting.
-
-.I mboxcl
-format is like
-.I mboxo
-format, but includes a Content-Length field with the
-number of bytes in the message.
-.I mboxcl2
-format is like
-.I mboxcl
-but has no
-.B >From
-quoting.
-These formats are used by SVR4 mailers.
-.I mboxcl2
-cannot be read safely by
-.I mboxrd
-readers.
-.SH "UNSPECIFIED DETAILS"
-There are many locking mechanisms for
-.I mbox
-files.
-.B qmail-local
-always uses
-.B flock
-on systems that have it, otherwise
-.BR lockf .
-
-The delivery date in a
-.B From_
-line does not specify a time zone.
-.B qmail-local
-always creates the delivery date in GMT
-so that
-.I mbox
-files can be safely transported from one time zone to another.
-
-If the mtime on a nonempty
-.I mbox
-file is greater than the atime,
-the file has new mail.
-If the mtime is smaller than the atime,
-the new mail has been read.
-If the atime equals the mtime,
-there is no way to tell whether the file has new mail,
-since
-.B qmail-local
-takes much less than a second to run.
-One solution is for a mail reader to artificially set the
-atime to the mtime plus 1.
-Then the file has new mail if and only if the atime is
-less than or equal to the mtime.
-
-Some mail readers place
-.B Status
-fields in each message to indicate which messages have been read.
-.SH "SEE ALSO"
-maildir(5),
-qmail-header(5),
-qmail-local(8)