newbery@rata.vuw.ac.nz (Michael Newbery) (11/04/88)
This article is being posted on behalf of a friend who noticed the anomally
while writing an RFC822 parser (in FORTRAN!) I checked and he seems to
be right. The curious may wonder why a New Zealand site is forwarding
stuff from Norway but that is another story...
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Would anyone out there like to explain the following problem/conflict
with RFC #822 (the "Standard for ARPA Internet Text Messages" used in
many mail systems) :-
Problem: The received message "id" in a "Received:" field is
not in the specified format for all mail I have seen (and a
friend confirms this also).
The definition for the "Received:" field is the following ...
received = "Received" ":"
["from" domain]
["by" domain]
["via" atom]
*("with" atom)
["id" msg-id]
["for" addr-spec]
";" date-time
The definition for "msg-id" is the following ...
msg-id = "<" addr-spec ">"
Now observe an example "Received:" field ...
Received: from relay.cs.net by RELAY.CS.NET
id eu17161; 20 Sep 88 1:37 EDT
For a start, the id is not surrounded by angle brackets ("<" and
">"). Secondly, "addr-spec" is defined to be ...
addr-spec = local-part "@" domain
... there is definitely not an "@" sign either???????
One might think that the definition of "msg-id" is incorrect;
however, for the "Message-ID:" field whose definition is ...
"Message-ID" ":" msg-id
... I have seen the following ...
Message-Id: <8809201329.AA26050@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>
... which is in the correct format!
What should the definition for the "id" section of a "Received:" field
be? Are there a lot of gateways out there that have got it wrong?
(My source for the RFC #822 definition is "Standard For The Format Of
ARPA Internet Text Messages", dated August 13, 1982, revised by David
H. Crocker).
Thanks
Mark Riley
GECO (Geophysical Company Of Norway A/S)
Internet: riley@gest01.sdr.slb.com
SINet: m_gest01::riley
Tel: +47 4 506437