lcz@dptspd.sat.datapoint.com (Lee Ziegenhals) (10/25/90)
We are running smail3.1 here, and we occasionally get mail that smail will not accept. The problem is "To:" lines of the following form: To: some.thing.or.another.;@some.where Smail complains that the ";" does not terminate a group. I examined RFC-822, and it appears to me that this is not a valid address. If the intent is that "some.thing.or.another.;" be a group, then it is missing a colon. If it is not a group, then the semicolon is a special character, and should be quoted. I know very little about mail headers, so I would appreciate any comments on the subject. Smail is not following the "be liberal in what you accept" policy here, but I would like to know if this form of addressing is valid or not before I go munging the code. Thanks, Lee Ziegenhals (lcz@sat.datapoint.com)
david@twg.com (David S. Herron) (10/27/90)
In article <710@dptspd.sat.datapoint.com> lcz@dptspd.sat.datapoint.com (Lee Ziegenhals) writes: > To: some.thing.or.another.;@some.where You are right, this is a syntax error. >I know very little about mail headers, so I would appreciate any comments >on the subject. Smail is not following the "be liberal in what you >accept" policy here, but I would like to know if this form of addressing >is valid or not before I go munging the code. There is a point where it is not worth being liberal enough to accept certain strings of garbage. -- <- David Herron, an MMDF & WIN/MHS guy, <david@twg.com> <- Formerly: David Herron -- NonResident E-Mail Hack <david@ms.uky.edu> <- <- Remember: On System V it's "tar xovf", not "tar xvf"!
tron@veritas.uucp (Ronald S. Karr) (10/30/90)
In article <710@dptspd.sat.datapoint.com> lcz@dptspd.sat.datapoint.com (Lee Ziegenhals) writes: > To: some.thing.or.another.;@some.where > >I know very little about mail headers, so I would appreciate any comments >on the subject. Smail is not following the "be liberal in what you >accept" policy here, but I would like to know if this form of addressing >is valid or not before I go munging the code. The form is not valid. Also, smail is supposed to reject such mail messages only if it is asked (using the -t option) to extract the recipient messages from the mail header itself (though there appears to be a bug here). However, with the -t option, smail must reject such a message, because the message is meaningless. I believe the bug can be fixed by applying the following (unofficial) patch: Index: src/header.c *************** *** 116,121 **** --- 116,122 ---- /* got an error message while extracting recipients, done */ return error; } + error = NULL; /* * if no recipient fields given, create a To: field containing -- tron |-<=>-| ARPAnet: veritas!tron@apple.com tron@veritas.com UUCPnet: {amdahl,apple,pyramid}!veritas!tron