Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ucbvax!naggum.uu.no!erik
From: erik@naggum.uu.no (Erik Naggum)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: An SMTP Question
Message-ID: <9008072209.AAsvarte10538@svarte.ifi.uio.no>
Date: 7 Aug 90 22:09:52 GMT
References: <130400009@S61.Prime.COM>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 33

In article <130400009@S61.Prime.COM>, John Bradley writes:
> I have an SMTP implementation that may or may not have a problem concerning
> null characters in the mail data.  RFC 821 states that the mail data may
> contain any of the 128 ASCII character codes.  This statement implys that
> the null character must also be handled as mail data.  Is this correct.

That's what the standard says.  I regard it as correct, and sendmail
(et al) as broken.  Yet another design flaw and disregard of standards
in sendmail.  Flame...

> I spoke with some people about this and they do not know of any
> implementation that supports this.  We have a customer who feels
> this is a problem.  The mail text with a null will truncate that
> line of the mail data since we are using C string functions.  Any
> comments or pointers will be appreciated.

I think it's _wrong_ to use C string functions with Internet stuff.  I
made my own string library for use with network stuff.  Would've been
easier to do with C++ than C, but it still works pretty neatly.
((short*)string)[-1] is a length word.  (256 bytes in a string is a
little short of the goal, when RFC 821 says minimum maximum length of
lines is 1000 characters.)  Some very neat and usual expressions don't
work this way.

In fact, I think it's about as appropriate to use UNIX and C standard
ways of doing things with the Internet as it would be with ASN.1 BER,
but it tends to work most of the time, so people don't care.  Aarrgghh!!

[Erik Naggum]  (a.k.a. "that damn purist")

PS: I hope that mailing to tcp-ip and namedroppers is going to get rid
of the ucbvax bogosity of using my Path field in the From header.  Sorry
about the problem.  I didn't know this was done to my articles.