Hi,
s-nail 14.9.11-1 on Arch Linux.
On running this command, I type the four characters ‘bar\n’, and then
Ctrl-D, my TTY's EOF character, before the three seconds have elapsed.
It appears thus, with ‘␣’ being the cursor.
$ sleep 3; mail -s foo $LOGNAME
bar
␣
As mail runs, it changes to
$ sleep 3; mail -s foo $LOGNAME
bar
bar
^@␣
Despite my EOF, no shell prompt appears so I type another EOF. And then
two more. Only then does mail exit and my $PS1 appear.
$ sleep 3; mail -s foo $LOGNAME
bar
bar
^@$
In total, one EOF before mail runs, three after.
The email that arrives has the null byte suggested by the ‘^@’.
$ sed -n \$p `mhpath .`
YmFyCgA=
$ sed -n \$p `mhpath .` | base64 -d | od -c
0000000 b a r \n \0
0000005
$
Type-ahead in the TTY has long been a Unix advantage. mail's notions of
line-editing is getting in the way.
--
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy
