Part of RFC 822 ignored by email module

[Bob Kline]

On 1/20/2011 5:34 PM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:25:52 -0500, Bob Kline wrote:
>
>> On 1/20/2011 3:48 PM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>>> That's only a problem if your code cares about the composition of the
>>> whitespace and this, IMO is incorrect behaviour. When the separator
>>> between syntactic elements in a header is 'whitespace' it should not
>>> matter what combination of newlines, tabs and spaces make up the
>>> whitespace element.
>> That would be true for what the RFC calls "structured" fields, but not
>> for the others (such as the Subject header).
> Subject text comparisons should work correctly if you were to split the
> subject text using the 'whitespace' definition and then reassemble it
> using a single space in place of each whitespace separator. Its either
> that or assuming that all MUAs use the same line length and all use a
> line split of "CRLF         " - the whitespace that's needed to align the
> continuation with the test on the first subject line. Many MUAs will do
> that, but its unlikely that all will.

Thanks.  I'm not sure everyone would agree that it's OK to collapse 
multiple consecutive spaces into one, but I'm beginning to suspect that 
those more concerned with preserving as much as possible of the original 
message are in the minority.  It sounds like my take-home distillation 
from this thread is "yes, the module ignores what the spec says about 
unfolding, but it doesn't matter."  I guess I can live with that.

-- 
Bob Kline
http://www.rksystems.com
mailto:bkline at rksystems.com