Octet Purge      Third release, version 1.2.

Written by Simon N Goodwin, 12-1997..7-1998.


WHAT?

A small program to scan a MIME mail file and
remove all octet-stream binary encoded or
BASE64 data sections.


WHY?

Written to keep the size of archived YAM mail
manageable, on the basis that binary contents
ought to be archived somewhere else already.

Marcel Beck tells me that the long-awaited YAM
v2 should have similar functionality built-in,
but this utility is still useful with YAM 2ß4.


REQUIREMENTS

Requires ASL library.
HiSoft BASIC 2 (to recompile the source).
Uses 15 point Helvetica.font when available.


HOW?

Start from Workbench by clicking on the icon.
Select a file to be scanned or CANCEL to quit.
Repeat selection for each file to be purged.

Input file is not modified. A new file on the
same path with the suffix ".purged" is created
containing the original contents except with
the 'application octet-stream' data sections
replaced with the text:

    **** Encoded binary deleted from archive.
    


KNOWN BUGS

No check that the output file name is valid.
No diagnostics if the input file is malformed.


HISTORY

Version 1.1 FIX always copies everything up to
first '--BOUNDARY' - earlier version might not
due to a difference of opinion between HiSoft
and the author over the correct interpretation
of Boolean NOT (they appear to think NOT 1 is
TRUE, whereas I expected it to be FALSE). And
as I wrote the original HB parser, this change
for 'Microsoft compatiblity ;-(' passed me by.

Version 1.2 removes BASE64 data hunks as well.


STATUS

Freely distributable; you must include source.


AUTHOR

Simon N Goodwin, simon@studio.woden.com


CREDITS

I am grateful to the following people for their help:

Ben Vost of Amiga Format for introducing me to YAM.
Marcel Beck for writing YAM and providing it for free.
Peter Corlett for configuring AdMail and YAM for me.