Why doesn Pine recognize Content-Length header field?
It would be a significant detriment to the performance of the Berkeley format mailbox parsing code, as well as to Pine’s behavior on normal systems which do not use the Content-Length: header, if any attempt were made to implement Content-Length:. There are many serious technical problems with the Content-Length: header, and we do not recommend its use. Furthermore, we recommend that a mail delivery agent such as our tmail tool be used that applies smart quoting, as opposed to the ordinary BSD /bin/mail quoting of all lines that begin with “From:”. We have installed such tools on all of our systems. For example, one problem is that a system whose mailer does not implement Content-Length: will also not enforce its validity should that header appear. This offers significant potential for mischief. Another problem is that Berkeley format mailbox files which use the Content-Length: header can not be edited with an editor such as emacs or vi without invalidating the Content-Length: field. I
