Posted by John Dunlop on 11/24/07 09:35

C. (http://symcbean.blogspot.com/):

> No - that's SMTP which is a specific transport mechanism for email
> (actually its a whole family of protocols but lets not go there) its
> up to the MUA ('mail' command on Unix or the SMTP implementation
> within PHP for |MSWin) to **convert** the message to a suitable format
> for the MTA, which may in turn encode the message in a different
> format depending on the carrier protocol.

Right.

> Perhaps historically the SMTP implementation in PHP couldn't
> accomodate this.
>
> If you sniff the SMTP connection you'll see that long lines do get
> wrapped - but the original message is restored when it comes out the
> MUA at the other end.

I wonder where PHP's figure 70 came from? If long lines do get
wrapped but you still recommended a limit, would you not recommend
78, in line with the transfer protocol?

On the other note, line endings seem a bit messy: \n for the message
body but \r\n for headers, whereas the transfer protocol demands \r\n
across the board. Then, I suppose, the whole business of line ending
conventions is messy.

--
Jock

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