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Re: [ietf-822] "--" first in lines to indicate start of signature

"Murray S. Kucherawy" <superuser@gmail.com> Sat, 02 January 2016 23:05 UTC

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Date: Sat, 02 Jan 2016 15:05:42 -0800
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From: "Murray S. Kucherawy" <superuser@gmail.com>
To: Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org>
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Cc: ietf-822@ietf.org, Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
Subject: Re: [ietf-822] "--" first in lines to indicate start of signature
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On Sat, Jan 2, 2016 at 1:02 PM, Russ Allbery <eagle@eyrie.org> wrote:

> > A common convention is that e-mail messages contain a short description
> > of the author, called "signature" and the start of this is indicated by
> > a line only containing the two characters "--".
>
> The full, "correct" convention is actually the three characters "-- " with
> the trailing space.  Obviously, this causes all sorts of problems in
> practice, and a lot of software is tolerant of the space being removed.
> But that was originally the standard to try to avoid issues with the other
> uses of -- on a line by itself.
>

What other uses of "--" on a line by itself are there?  The only thing I
can think of is ASCII art.

-MSK

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