[comp.sources.bugs] Mail User's Shell

roger@celtics.UUCP (Roger B.A. Klorese) (12/12/87)

Have there been any fixes posted to the Mail User's Shell?  The bug which is
biting me is a bug in alias expansion wherein addresses are separated by commas
in the return address.  Smail, in turn, sees the comma as part of the address
and gets quite confused.
-- 
 ///==\\   (Your message here...)
///        Roger B.A. Klorese, CELERITY (Northeast Area)
\\\        40 Speen St., Framingham, MA 01701  +1 617 872-1552
 \\\==//   celtics!roger@necntc.nec.com - necntc!celtics!roger

dheller@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Dan Heller) (12/12/87)

In article <1903@celtics.UUCP> roger@celtics.UUCP (Roger B.A. Klorese) writes:
>Have there been any fixes posted to the Mail User's Shell?  The bug which is
>biting me is a bug in alias expansion wherein addresses are separated by commas
>in the return address.  Smail, in turn, sees the comma as part of the address
>and gets quite confused.


The latest 6.0a diffs available on spam.istc.sri.com have compiler switches
which optionally remove commas between addresses.

The diffs on spam contain a complete list of the bugs fixed as well as a
new makefile for xenix machines.  version 6.0a also supports terminfo and
termio.

As always, if you have no access to spam, you can mail me here and I'll
mail them to you.  Please indicate if the path to your machine can't
handle files over size N.  Otherwise, I'll try mailing it in tarmail
format.

Dan Heller <island!argv@ucbcad.berkeley.edu>
			...dan

allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) (12/17/87)

As quoted from <1903@celtics.UUCP> by roger@celtics.UUCP (Roger B.A. Klorese):
+---------------
| Have there been any fixes posted to the Mail User's Shell?  The bug which is
| biting me is a bug in alias expansion wherein addresses are separated by commas
| in the return address.  Smail, in turn, sees the comma as part of the address
| and gets quite confused.
+---------------

This is a bug in Smail; RFC822 states that ',' is the separator between
addresses, spaces are basically ignored in RFC822 addresses.  Of course,
standard /bin/mail (all systems) is also broken in this way; it may be
/bin/mail rather than Smail which is causing your problems.
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery		      necntc!ncoast!allbery@harvard.harvard.edu
 {hoptoad,harvard!necntc,cbosgd,sun!mandrill!hal,uunet!hnsurg3}!ncoast!allbery
			Moderator of comp.sources.misc

rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) (12/18/87)

In comp.mail.misc (<6807@ncoast.UUCP>), allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) writes:
>... RFC822 states that ',' is the separator between
>addresses, spaces are basically ignored in RFC822 addresses...
Huh?  According to pages 10-12 of the RFC spaces separate tokens.  If
there is to be a space in an address, it must be in a quoted string.  In
particular,
	    Full\ Name@Domain
    is not legal and must be specified as:
	    "Full Name"@Domain
-- 
For comp.sources.unix stuff, mail to sources@uunet.uu.net.

david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- Resident E-mail Hack) (12/19/87)

In article <266@fig.bbn.com> rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:
>In comp.mail.misc (<6807@ncoast.UUCP>), allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) writes:
>>... RFC822 states that ',' is the separator between
>>addresses, spaces are basically ignored in RFC822 addresses...
>Huh?  According to pages 10-12 of the RFC spaces separate tokens.  If
>there is to be a space in an address, it must be in a quoted string.  In
>particular,
>	    Full\ Name@Domain
>    is not legal and must be specified as:
>	    "Full Name"@Domain

You're both right ...

Spaces need to be quoted since they seperate tokens.

BUT, From:, Reply-To:, To: and so forth all take a "1#address"
or "1#mailbox" ...

"1#" is the way the authors chose to represent a list which
has one or more elements and elements are seperated by comma's.

It's unfortunate that the grammar specification in RFC-822
is so spread out, out of the ordinary, and thus hard to understand.

Oh, take a look at p.18 and p.4 ...
-- 
<---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy            <david@ms.uky.edu>
<---- or:                {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<----
<---- Winter health warning:  Remember, don't eat the yellow snow!

egisin@orchid.waterloo.edu (Eric Gisin) (12/21/87)

In article <266@fig.bbn.com>, rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:
> Huh?  According to pages 10-12 of the RFC spaces separate tokens.  If
> there is to be a space in an address, it must be in a quoted string.  In
> particular,
> 	    Full\ Name@Domain
>     is not legal and must be specified as:
> 	    "Full Name"@Domain

An address usually consists of several tokens, which
may be seperated with white space (and comments).
For example, "egisin (Eric Gisin) @ Waterloo. EDU" is valid.

allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) (12/24/87)

As quoted from <266@fig.bbn.com> by rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz):
+---------------
| In comp.mail.misc (<6807@ncoast.UUCP>), allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) writes:
| >... RFC822 states that ',' is the separator between
| >addresses, spaces are basically ignored in RFC822 addresses...
| Huh?  According to pages 10-12 of the RFC spaces separate tokens.  If
| there is to be a space in an address, it must be in a quoted string.  In
| particular,
| 	    Full\ Name@Domain
|     is not legal and must be specified as:
| 	    "Full Name"@Domain
+---------------

From the "grammar" for message headers in RFC822:

"2.7.  #RULE:  LISTS

	"A construct `#' is defined, similar to `*', as follows:

			"<l>#<m>element

"indicating at least <l> and at most <m> elements, each separated by one or
more commas (`,')....

"4.1.  SYNTAX

"...destination = `To'		`:' 1#address
		/ `Resent-To'	`:' 1#address
		/ `cc'		`:' 1#address
		/ `Resent-cc'	`:' 1#address
		/ `bcc'		`:'  #address
		/ `Resent-bcc'	`:'  #address"

QED.
-- 
	      Brandon S. Allbery, Moderator of comp.sources.misc
 {hoptoad,harvard!necntc,cbosgd,sun!mandrill!hal,uunet!hnsurg3}!ncoast!allbery
     [This space reserved for future quotes and similar brain twisters.]