[New-bugs-announce] [issue29478] email.policy.Compat32(max_line_length=None) not as documented

[Martin Panter]

New submission from Martin Panter:

By default, the email package turns single-line header fields into multi-line ones to try and limit the length of each line. The documentation <https://docs.python.org/release/3.5.2/library/email.policy.html#email.policy.Policy.max_line_length> says that setting the policy’s max_line_length attribute to None should prevent line wrapping. But this does not work:

>>> from email.policy import Compat32
>>> from email.message import Message
>>> from email.generator import Generator
>>> from sys import stdout
>>> p = Compat32(max_line_length=None)
>>> m = Message(p)
>>> m["Field"] = "x" * 100
>>> Generator(stdout).flatten(m)  # Field is split across two lines
Field: 
 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

>>> 

A workaround is to specify zero instead:

>>> p = Compat32(max_line_length=0)
>>> Generator(stdout, policy=p).flatten(m)  # All on one line
Field: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Quickly looking at the code, Compat32._fold() passes max_line_length straight to Header.encode(), which is documented as using None as a placeholder for its real default value of 76. So I think the solution would be to add a special case in _fold() to call encode(maxlinelen=0) if max_line_length is None.

----------
components: email
messages: 287294
nosy: barry, martin.panter, r.david.murray
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: email.policy.Compat32(max_line_length=None) not as documented
type: behavior
versions: Python 3.5, Python 3.6, Python 3.7

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue29478>
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