Date: Wed, 23 Dec 92 11:02:31 PST From: Eric Messick <eric@parallax.com>

It would canonicalize a file by turning all sequences of white space into a single space and trimming leading and trailing whitespace from the file before computing the hash.

If the message contained a table of figures formatted and seperated with spaces then that method would destroy the readability of the table. If the file was processed to change tabs to spaces, according to your .exrc settings, then the message would be cleared of any ambiguities from differing lengths of tabs. This is assuming none of the forwarding mail systems between parties replaces a sequence of spaces with a single tab. I personally havent seen such behaviour, nor would I expect it. It makes too many (bad) assumptions. Trailing spaces should of course be nulled as they serve little purpose. Mark mark@coombs.anu.edu.au