Topic: Missing Line Feeds

[galoisgroup04]

It seems that some ISP's strip line feeds out of text file attachments.

Does anybody else have this problem and is there an easy work-around available?

Many thanks

[Simon]

Hi, and 

Somebody might understand your question, but for me, could you expand a bit?  What do you mean by 'line feeds'?

[Rik]

Normally that would be an ASCII 10 (0A) character, Simon, often combined with a CR 13 (0D).

Though I'd be surprised if ISPs were stripping them from files, they are usually just treated as binaries and are not filtered or altered in any way. It's mor likely to be an incompatibility between creating program (or OS) and reading program.

[galoisgroup04]

Sorry to be obtuse!

it's the "0D" s that are missing from file attachments.

Regards etc.

[Rik]

What program is creating the files, on what platform, eg Windows, Linux, Mac?

What email clients are being used at each end?

Are the files standard attachments, eg text files, or are they zipped?

[galoisgroup04]

The line feed characters are in a text file attachment (though with a phoney file extension) created by a Visual Basic program.

Initially we had a problem when the file attachment was sent to a hotmail account. However, the recipient set up a "proper" e-mail service with SKY and used Outlook Express as a client. There was no problem until an outage at SKY. Now SKY is back on line the problem has recurred.

As a work-around the file is being sent to my PC as well as the normal recipient's and the "line-feeds" are there. The implication is that Hotmail strips out line feeds and now so does SKY. Perhaps there's another explanation because I am not in control of the other person's computer ~ I'm just trying to help out.

The second part of my original question was "Is there a work-around readily available to overcome the problem?"

I ask this because if the "corrupt" file is read as though it is a text file with MS-Notepad it appears to be a long string of characters with square blocks in it. Reading it with Wordpad the file is in neat lines with "line-feeds" assumed.

Thanks for any help out there.

[sam]

could it be that the spam filters that hotmail and I guess now Sky use block sending attachments of these nature? i know for example google do not allow executables (well files with the extension .exe) to be sent.

How about getting some free online hosting space and using that as a temporary work around?

[galoisgroup04]

OK ~ as ever describing the problem in great depth and experimenting has led me to a work-around:

Open the corrupt file (which has a phoney extension of .eve) with Wordpad and save it as a text file (i.e. with a .txt file extension). This puts the line feeds (0D) back in.
 
Rename the corrupt file so you don't lose it or move it to a different folder
 
Rename the text file that you've created to its original name and Bob's your uncle!

Thanks to those who helped me concentrate!

[Rik]

I think this is a formatting issue. Can you check the original VB file in a hex viewer? I've got a hunch it's only using the 0A life feed, which is common these days, while 'pure' text editors tend to expect the 0A/0D combination.

I suppose the one place that it could be altered is in a spam filter, in which case, zipping the file for transmission might be an option.

[galoisgroup04]

Thanks for the idea but this is not a VB error ~ I generated the source file and e-mailed it to somebody else.

My version (the one attached to the e-mail in my outbox) was fine BUT the recipient's was corrupted.

Regards

[Rik]

I'm not saying it's an error as such, more a question of compatibility. What do you use to view the file?

[galoisgroup04]

The file is used by some specialist  that needs both a line feed and a Carriage Return to operate properly ~ but in reality it is simply a text file.

Both Bytes are there on transmission as an e-mail attachment but the 0D (Carriage Return ~ sorry about the slip) is missing at the recipient's end so the Bridge Scoring software cannot read the file.

I now, thanks to this forum, have a work-around, but thought that others might know which ISP's modify file attachments ~ as it seems that they do.

Regards to all who remain interested.

[Rik]

Two possibilities occur to me. It's being stripped as part of the MIME encoding process, but if that's the case, copies you send to yourself would also have the CR stripped. Otherwise, the only thing I can think of is that a spam filter is acting on the file, but I can't see why it would strip CRs.

I'd be happy to receive a copy of the file from you and check what happens. PM me if you want to try, and I'll give you some email addresses.