[Mailman-Users] Slash in email address???

[Greg Ward]

On 16 August 2001, Enriko Groen said:
> Reply to the user stating to get another/different emailaddress.

Many people don't have control over what their email address is; it may
be chosen by some faraway pinhead IT type.

> Using things like '/' and '&' in your mailadress is basicly a bad idea.

True, but...

> People are free not to follow standards, but they should not complain if
> things fail.

... the relevant standard here, RFC 822, is quite liberal in what
constitutes an email address.  (Probably necessary because it predates
the days of "everyone" being "username at example.com" -- and becaue there
are indeed people out there with slashes, percent signs, and so forth in
their email addresses.

Here are the relevant snippets from RFC 822.  addr-spec is the
grammatical element we're talking about here; Mailman only traffics in
addr-spec's, and doesn't deal with RFC 822's higher-level things
('mailbox' and 'address' specifically).

     addr-spec   =  local-part "@" domain        ; global address

     local-part  =  word *("." word)             ; uninterpreted
                                                 ; case-preserved
     domain      =  sub-domain *("." sub-domain)

     sub-domain  =  domain-ref / domain-literal

     domain-ref  =  atom                         ; symbolic reference

     domain-literal =  "[" *(dtext / quoted-pair) "]"

     atom        =  1*<any CHAR except specials, SPACE and CTLs>

     word        =  atom / quoted-string

     quoted-string = <"> *(qtext/quoted-pair) <">; Regular qtext or
                                                 ;   quoted chars.

     specials    =  "(" / ")" / "<" / ">" / "@"  ; Must be in quoted-
                 /  "," / ";" / ":" / "\" / <">  ;  string, to use
                 /  "." / "[" / "]"              ;  within a word.


It looks to me as though

    #!/bin/sh++@[1.2.3.4]

is a perfectly valid email address.  If Mailman can't handle this, then
IMHO Mailman is broken.  "Be liberal in what you accept, and
conservative in what you emit."

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - software developer                gward at mems-exchange.org
MEMS Exchange                            http://www.mems-exchange.org