Re: Extra commas in To: field

From: Hardy Griech (rgriech@swol.de)
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 07:56:14 +0100

On Wed, 19 May 1999 19:01:56 -0400,
Andrew@hodgsons.freeserve.co.uk (Andrew Hodgson) wrote:
:
> was getting a new isp because of the server restrictions. This is not realy
> a legal (name) according to one of the rfc's, and so IBM will not allow it.
:

Which RFC?

RFC822 says something about comments in address fields:

A.1.4. Wilt . (the Stilt) Chamberlain@NBA.US

The "(the Stilt)" is a comment, which is NOT included in
the destination mailbox address handed to the originating
system's mailer. The local-part of the address is the string
"Wilt.Chamberlain", with NO space between the first and second
words.

In chapter D it says:

comment = "(" *(ctext / quoted-pair / comment) ")"
CR = <ASCII CR, carriage return> ; ( 15, 13.)
CRLF = CR LF
ctext = <any CHAR excluding "(", ; => may be folded
")", "\" & CR, & including
linear-white-space>

Thus I'm almost sure, that the RFCs allow ',' in between '()'. But I
doubt, that many mail programs handle comments correctly (even VSoup
;-)).

Hardy

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