ietf-nntp NNTP doubling of starting periods

[Jean van Waterschoot]

RFC 977 specifies the following for lines that start with a period (.)

>   The text forming the header and body of the message to be posted
>   should be sent by the client using the conventions for text received
>   from the news server:  A single period (".") on a line indicates the
>   end of the text, with lines starting with a period in the original
>   text having that period doubled during transmission.
>
>   No attempt shall be made by the server to filter characters, fold or
>   limit lines, or otherwise process incoming text.  It is our intent
>   that the server just pass the incoming message to be posted to the
>   server installation's news posting software, which is separate from
>   this specification.  See RFC850 for more details.

Is this still in use? It seems unnecessary to distinguish lines that
contain *only* a period (etx) from text lines that start with a period. Any
parser should be able to recognize that <cr><lf>.<cr><lf> is the end of the
data stream and treat lines that start with a period as normal text lines.

I tried sending lines that started with 1-5 periods on a line through INN
and it passed them unaltered as the second paragraph suggests it should.

If this is not used should it be phased out for the sake of transparency? 

Comments?

Jean. (jvwater at mcs.net)
http://www.mcs.net/~jvwater