[Mailman-Developers] email comparison bug?

[John W Baxter]

At 12:12 -0500 1/1/2003, Stonewall Ballard wrote:
>One of my users got two notices for her two lists at one domain, instead of
>one notice with two password/URLs.
>
>One of the lists has her address all lower case, and the other is capped
>like this: HerName at aol.com
>
>They're exactly the same otherwise. Is this a bug in 2.1's comparison
>function that it uses to group accounts for "global" operations and monthly
>notices?
>
>This is with 2.1 final.

I don't know how Mailman can be expected to know which domains treat
address local parts caselessly (hint: almost all) and which treat them
casefully (hint: the RFCs still allow it).

Since <HerName> *can* be a different account than is <hername>, I think
we're stuck, even though it almost never is.  When there is a sitewide
database of Mailman users...we'll STILL be stuck, I fear, although the GUI
might allow a user to say the equivalent of "that's me, too."

Exim, as one MTA by way of example, defaults to caseless operation although
it carefully preserves the local part case.  It can be configured (with one
config file line) to consider local part case.  I'm sure those code paths
get less testing and exercising than the caseless ones do.

  --John
-- 
John Baxter   jwblist at olympus.net      Port Ludlow, WA, USA