Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections |
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Introduction | Sustainability Factors | Content Categories | Format Descriptions | Contact |
Full name | MBOXCL Email Format |
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Description |
MBOXCL is one of the MBOX family of related file formats used for holding collections of electronic mail messages. See MBOX for a description of the syntax. Like MBOXO, MBOXCL utilizes irreversible quoting prepending one greater-than sign (“>”) before the "From " string whenever it occurs at the beginning of a line in either the header or the body of a message. Unlike MBOXO (and MBOXRD) however, MBOXCL does not scan for "From " to determine message separator points. Instead, each MBOXCL message contains a 'Content-Length:' header that denotes the length of the message body, after transformation, in bytes. This header is added to the message when it is added to the mailbox, and used to locate the start of each next message. |
Production phase | Used for content in initial (by message authors), middle (by archives) or final state (by message recipients/other end users). |
Relationship to other formats | |
Subtype of | MBOX, MBOX Email Format |
LC experience or existing holdings | See MBOX |
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LC preference | See MBOX |
Disclosure | See MBOX |
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Documentation | See MBOX |
Adoption | Linux email clients are more likely to use MBOXCL or MBOXCL2. See also MBOX |
Licensing and patents | See MBOX |
Transparency | See MBOX |
Self-documentation | See MBOX |
External dependencies | See MBOX |
Technical protection considerations | See MBOX |
Tag | Value | Note |
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Filename extension | See related format. | See MBOX |
Internet Media Type | See related format. | See MBOX |
Magic numbers | See related format. | See MBOX |
Pronom PUID | fmt/720 |
See http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/fmt/720. Note that PRONOM does not specify variants of MBOX. |
Wikidata Title ID | Q527723 |
See https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q527723. Note that Wikidata does not specify variants of MBOX. |
General |
See MBOX for compatibility issues. |
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History |
MBOXCL is so named because messages are distinguished not by "From " lines but rather by the 'Content-Length:' (CL) header. MBOXCL and MBOXCL2 originated from the file format used by Unix System V Release 4 mail tools |
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