REMAIL: scan, folders scripts

Karl Lui Barrus klbarrus at owlnet.rice.edu
Sat Nov 13 10:24:53 PST 1993


Well, I put two PERL scripts I wrote at the ftp site (named
misc.elm.scripts.tar.gz); here is the README file:

scan is the script which prints out signature information of pgp
signed messages (instead of where the message came from).  Thus, if
pgp signed mail is sent through an anonymous remailer, you see who
signed the message instead of where it came from.  The inner loop is
ugly and needs major reworking; I've noted this below and in a comment
in the code :-)

It would be easy to include this in the mh 'folder' command, but I
don't have mh anymore here on owlnet :(  Integration into elm itself
would be great.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

These are two experimental PERL scripts I wrote which report
information about elm mail folders.

folders prints a summary of mail in your ~/Mail directory.  It prints
out how many letters are in each folders, and how many files are in
each directory.

~> folders
Folder     austin         :    4 messages
Folder     cypher         :   20 messages
Folder     educom         :    1 message
Folder     inc            :   17 messages
Directory  misc           :   12 messages
Folder     store          :   26 messages
Folder     ysn            :    0 messages

- --------------------

scan prints out a more detailed summary of a folder in the ~/Mail
directory.  It prints message number, who the message is from, and the
subject.

~>scan cypher
   1  hfinney at shell.portal.com   Chaum's credentials (technical question)
   2  hughes at ah.com              Chaum's credentials (technical question)
   3  hfinney at shell.portal.com   Signing keys for nyms
   4  hfinney at shell.portal.com   message depots, packet routing?
   5  hughes at ah.com              Signing keys for nyms
   6  szabo at netcom.com           Commerce models

scan also takes an optional argument: -p
this will make scan look for pgp signed messages, and attempt to
verify them.  An asterisk is printed at each signed message, and the
signer's address is printed instead.

~>scan -p cypher
   1* Hal Finney <74076.1041 at com Chaum's credentials (technical question)
   2  hughes at ah.com              Chaum's credentials (technical question)
   3* Hal Finney <74076.1041 at com Signing keys for nyms
   4* Hal Finney <74076.1041 at com message depots, packet routing?
   5  hughes at ah.com              Signing keys for nyms
   6  szabo at netcom.com           Commerce models

Here, we see three messages are signed, and the signer's address is
printed instead.  This distinction is important if a message is sent
via and anonymous remailer, for example.  In this case, instead of
printing the anonymous remailer as who sent the message, you will see
who signed the message (which may in turn be a pseudonym, etc.)

BUGS: 

folders counts the number of message by looking for 'From' at the
beginning of a line.  This causes problems if the text of a message
contains 'From' at the left, or if a message contains a forwarded
message, or somehow pastes in another message's header.  In these
cases, the message count will be off.

scan probably also makes this mistake.  In fact, you will find the
inner loop of scan to be pretty ugly.  I will clean it up eventually.

scan winds up piping message to PGP to check signatures.  This
degrades performance.

scan is not able to deal with pathological files: pgp messages that
don't have an end delimiter, etc.

One of these days I will read RFC-822 and other relevant documents and
make the message count accurate.

Comments, bug fixes, enhancements :-) are all welcome at
klbarrus at owlnet.rice.edu 

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