[Wylug-help] Illegal characters in email addresses.

[James Holden]

Yes, it's legal.

No, not much stuff treats it as such.

Pretty much any printable 7 bit ascii character is legal in a mail 
address, with hilarious consequences to off-guard developers.

James


Simon Wood wrote:

>Hi all,
>I came across an email with a "'" in it.
>
>Looking at RFC2822 it appears to be legal, but when replying to it exim4 kicks up the following error:
>---
>* Connecting to SMTP server: localhost ...
>[18:48:53] SMTP< 220 slone.mungewell.org ESMTP Exim 4.50 Mon, 06 Jun 2005 18:48:53 -0600
>[18:48:53] SMTP> HELO slone.mungewell.org
>[18:48:53] SMTP< 250 slone.mungewell.org Hello localhost [127.0.0.1]
>[18:48:53] SMTP> MAIL FROM:<simon at mungewell.org>
>[18:48:53] SMTP< 250 OK
>[18:48:53] SMTP> RCPT TO:<simon'stest at localhost>
>[18:48:53] SMTP< 550 restricted characters in address
>** error occurred on SMTP session
>** Error occurred while sending the message.
>---
>
>What's even more confusing is that it has already passed through exim4 on the inward journey, see log:
>---
>2005-06-06 16:36:00 1DfQCO-0000TJ-3F <= Catherine_O'Brien at opusframing.ca H=localhost (mungewell.org) [127.0.0.1] P=esmtp
>S=1654 id=fc.000f7cf20013ddad3b9aca009cd41b91.13ddb5 at opusframing.ca 2005-06-06 16:36:00 1DfQCO-0000TJ-3F => kriszi <krisztina at mungewell.org> R=local_user T=mail_spool
>2005-06-06 16:36:00 1DfQCO-0000TJ-3F Completed
>---
>and then:
>---
>2005-06-06 17:57:51 H=localhost (slone.mungewell.org) [127.0.0.1] F=<krisztina at mungewell.org> rejected RCPT <Catherine_O'Brien at opusf
>raming.ca>: restricted characters in address
>2005-06-06 17:57:58 unexpected disconnection while reading SMTP command from localhost (slone.mungewell.org) [127.0.0.1]
>---
>
>Can anyone confirm whether "'" is/is not legal before I file a bug report.
>
>Thanks,
>Simon.
>
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