So presumably the entire contents of the ssl public and/or private key could be included verbatim in the configuration file without the "<" input pipeline redirection symbol.

On February 19, 2022 5:25:15 AM AKST, Bernardo Reino <reinob@bbmk.org> wrote:
On Sat, 19 Feb 2022, necktwi wrote:

After adding “<“ before ssl_ca file path, macOS mail client complained no 
more. Why do we need “<“ before file paths? — Necktwi

Because the manual says so? :)

"The < is mandatory. It indicates that the variable should contain contents of 
the file, instead of the file name. Not using it will cause an error."
(https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/dovecot_ssl_configuration/)

Or is it a rhetorical question?
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