[H-GEN] Interpretation of RFC822

Everist, Geoff everistg at switch.aust.com
Mon Oct 7 03:40:50 EDT 2002


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OK...by way of "starting a useful discussion" instead of just sending test 
messages to the list, I pose this little conundrum (it may not be useful 
to others, but the answers will certainly be useful to me):

According to RFC822, is this a legal "mailbox" entry for a from header?

 "Bloggs, Fred"<fbloggs at common.com>

Or is a space REQUIRED between the "phrase" (i.e. "Bloggs, Fred") and the 
"route-addr" (<common.com>)?. If a space is required (which is what most 
MUA's seem to do), then which part of the standard mandates this?

Just out of interest, herewith the relevant syntax rules:

authentic   =   "From"       ":"   mailbox  ; Single author
mailbox     =  addr-spec                    ; simple address
               /  phrase route-addr         ; name & addr-spec
phrase      =  1*word                       ; Sequence of words
word        =  atom / quoted-string
quoted-string = <"> *(qtext/quoted-pair) <">; Regular qtext or
                                            ;   quoted chars
qtext       =  <any CHAR excepting <">,     ; => may be folded
               "\" & CR, and including
                    linear-white-space>
quoted-pair =  "\" CHAR                     ; may quote any char
route-addr  =  "<" [route] addr-spec ">"
route       =  1#("@" domain) ":"           ; path-relative
addr-spec   =  local-part "@" domain        ; global address

The rest should be fairly obvious. I think the interesting bit is the 
meaning of 1*word, and how this implies a space must follow if phrase is 
only one word. Bonus point for the person who comes up with the part of 
the RFC that discusses spaces in phrases, and an extra special bonus point 
for explaining how it is relevant to this situation.

If this email actually makes it to the list without listmom having to 
interfere, then it will prove that Majordomo is expecting a space between 
the phrase and the route-addr :-)

Cheers
Geoff Everist


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