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?