Re: format-patch: "magic" mbox timestamp

Brandon Richardson [off-list ref] writes:

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm assuming the "UNIX mailbox
format" referenced in the docs refers to the mbox database format
described in appendix A of RFC-4155. If so, since we use a commit id
in place of the sender email address, would that itself be sufficient
to indicate that the output isn't from a real mailbox? A commit id
will never match the addr-spec in RFC-2822, so I figure that anyone
looking at `format-patch` output could safely assume that it did not
originate from a mailbox.

I vaguely recall that it was possible for the "From" line that
begins each message in a UNIX mbox had a local sender without "@",
so it would be a bit wider than addr-spec and a string of raw
hexadecimal digits would not sufficiently "strange" enough to serve
as a "magic" identifier.