What's with the equal signs?
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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It's a product of the format being parsed twice. Each line should be 80 characters with an = at the end, then a carriage return+newline(lf) to continue the line. Somewhere the cr+lf got converted to just an lf and then when reparsed it removed the lf plus the next character, making it still conain the equals but not the next letter of the message.
Here's a better technical explanation if you care: https://youtu.be/SVVnkNZWJhk
Interesting I do care, I am an IT guy who enjoy understanding why!
it is some old formatting getting converted incorrectly I believe, though I don't remember the details
Tldr email is an ancient protocol and windows filesystems do funny things with ancient protocols when processed through modern code that doesn't expect it