[Mailman-Users] special characters in name and address

[Matthew Shames]

Thanks Richard--I should have done a little more checking before sending 
the message to the list. In fact, it appears to be a problem with the OS 
X mail client--other clients that I was able to test correctly quoted 
the name portion of the header.

Thanks again...


matt


On Tuesday, January 8, 2002, at 10:33 AM, Richard Barrett wrote:

> At 09:56 08/01/2002 -0600, Matthew Shames wrote:
>> Hey folks,
>>
>> I hope you don't mind another question from a Mailman "newbie". I am 
>> another of the Mac enthusiasts who have moved over to OS X in the past 
>> couple of years, and am enjoying expanding my knowledge to include 
>> some UNIX basics.
>>
>> I've noticed a strange problem whereby Mailman appears to munge the 
>> "From" address when it contains both a name and an address, and the 
>> name contains a period. The setup: Mailman 2.0.7 on OS X 10.1.2, with 
>> Postfix (20010228-pl08) as the MTA. The list in question is called 
>> "test", and restricts postings to subscribed users. If I send a 
>> message, and the "From" header is set to:
>>
>> Matthew E. Shames <macdaddy at bluesmobile.com>
>>
>> Mailman rejects it because it states that it is being sent from 
>> matthewe.shames at bluesmobile.com. Additionally, it tries to send a 
>> bounce message to matthewe.shames at bluesmobile.com, which is not a 
>> valid address, so the postmaster (also me) gets notified.
>>
>> Now, if I set the "From" header to:
>>
>> Matthew Shames <macdaddy at bluesmobile.com>
>>
>> the message goes through without any incident. Additionally, if I set 
>> member_posting_only to false, messages from either scenario make it 
>> through without incident.
>
> This is not a Mailman issue but a failure to conform to RFC822 issue. 
> The '.' character is a special character in a mail header field while 
> 'Matthew', 'E' and 'Shames' are atoms. Because of the special character 
> you need to quote the string. You should be saying:
>
>     "Matthew E. Shames" <macdaddy at bluesmobile.com>
>
> The missing quotes are leading to a parsed result which is at variance 
> with your desires.
>
> The other form you used:
>
> Matthew Shames <macdaddy at bluesmobile.com>
>
> is OK because 'Matthew' and 'Shames' are both atoms and hence the 
> string does not require quoting.
>
> If you are really sad, mad or bad see 
> http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html
>
>> I'm not completely sure if this is a postfix issue, or a mailman 
>> issue, or something else. However, I don't seem to have this issue 
>> when sending non-list mail through postfix.
>>
>> I hope this makes sense--I'd be happy to explain further. If anyone 
>> has any insights, I'd be most grateful.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>

>>
>>
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>
>
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