Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site hou3c.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!hou3c!Murray.pa@XEROX.ARPA From: Murray.pa@XEROX.ARPA Newsgroups: net.mail.headers Subject: Names with spaces Message-ID: <968@hou3c.UUCP> Date: Thu, 20-Dec-84 07:34:55 EST Article-I.D.: hou3c.968 Posted: Thu Dec 20 07:34:55 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 12-Jan-85 08:23:27 EST Sender: ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist) Lines: 35 To: Header-People@MIT-MC.ARPA Cc: Murray.pa@XEROX.ARPA We are in the final stages of bringing up a mail gateway between Grapevine, our research mail system, with names like "Murray.PA" and our product mail system with names like "Hallam G. Murray:OSBU North". Note the nasty things like periods and spaces in the new names. Does anybody out there have a system that will get in serious trouble if we send you a message with a return-path containing spaces? By "serious" I mean crash your system or break your mail server rather than generating obscure error messages when somebody tries to reply to a message with an unparsable header. Do I need to drop everything and hack our mail gateway to prevent names with spaces from escaping into the internet? A few people have been testing things for the past month. So far, nobody has complained to me that their new name was causing unreasonable problems, like preventing them from exchanging mail with somebody else. I am expecting to encounter some rough edges. I won't get upset if a few users can't exchange mail with a few obscure sites, but I will have to do something if too many sites can't live with our new names. Assuming that our names contain spaces, will you be able to send mail to us? Assuming that we get the quotes right and such, will you be able to receive mail from us? Will the corner of your mail processing software that automatically generates headers to help you answer a message still work? Should I send a test case? Anybody want a summary of the answers I get back? Do you know of any other pitfalls in this area that I might have overlooked?