Re: [Nmh-workers] Thoughts: header/address parsing

[Jon Fairbairn]

address@hidden writes:

> Ken Hornstein <address@hidden> writes
>
>>>One example: Get the effective content part of an 'X-Spam-Status" header.>
>>That program already exists today.
>>
>>% scan -width 9999 -format '%{x-spam-status}' messages ....
>>
>>should do what you want, I think.
>
> If I replace "x-spam-status" by "to", and there are multiple "To:" fields,
> I'm not sure what I want. I think I want each addressee on a separate line.
> But whatever I want,
>
>       % scan -width 9999 -format '%{to}' messages ...
>
> does not give me what I want. Parsing its output, distinguishing commas
> used as delimiters, and commas within quotes, is not quite trivial.

I’m with Norm on the general principle. Fans of GUI mail readers
are unlikely to switch to using [n]mh, but one of the places
where it could really get traction is as a suite of general
purpose mail handling programmes (my request for a “basename”
format for mhstore is another example). For this to work, output
from nmh programmes needs to be structured so as to minimise the
pain of subsequent processing.

-- 
Jón Fairbairn                                 address@hidden