Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cwjcc!gatech!ncar!tank!uxc!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!helios.ee.lbl.gov!lll-tis!cwi.nl!piet From: piet@cwi.nl (Piet Beertema) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso.x400.gateway Subject: Re: Response to comments on DRAFT/2 Message-ID: <8809220938.AA07758@sering.cwi.nl> Date: 22 Sep 88 12:38:34 GMT References: <"88-09-21-14:01:55.67*GRZ027"@DBNGMD21.BITNET> Sender: root@tis.llnl.gov Distribution: inet Organization: The Internet Lines: 26 Approved: post-x400-gateway@tis.llnl.gov > All email addresses are single character strings. Not > arrays of strings; not forms; but strings, of printing, > nonblank, characters. -------- RFC822 does not say "nonblank": True. RFC822 allows a local-part to be a quoted-string which can explicitly include white space (pages 27, 11 and 10). However, your quote from pp 30/31 implicitly says you have to be VERY careful with such things: 6.2.4. DOMAIN-DEPENDENT LOCAL STRING The local-part of an addr-spec in a mailbox specification (i.e., the host's name for the mailbox) is understood to be whatever the receiving mail protocol server allows. For exam- ple, some systems do not understand mailbox references of the form "P. D. Q. Bach", but others do. The example on pp 30/31 focusses on de period, but how many mailers in use today on (e.g.) Unix systems will accept "John Doe"@domain", but will fail on "John Doe"@domain? Piet