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From: ehrlich@cs.psu.edu (Dan Ehrlich)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Free standing periods
Message-ID: <ne1H#ou@cs.psu.edu>
Date: 10 May 91 18:14:49 GMT
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Organization: Computer Science Department, Penn State University
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After many hours of debate with others here at Penn State we still have not
resolved the following:  Are free standing periods allowed in a mailbox
specification?  For example, most sendmails will happily accept

	John Q. Public <jpublic@cs.psu.edu>

Rayan Zachariassen's ZMailer on the other hand complains loudly that free
standing periods can only occur inside a quoted string.  Here is an example:

	Illegal-Object: Syntax error in From: address found on cs.psu.edu:
	From:	John Q.Public <jpublic@cs.psu.edu>
		^     ^-illegal period in phrase
		 \-phrases containing '.' must be quoted

After pouring over RFC822 and RFC1123 a few times I have come to the
conclusion that this case is not clearly covered.  I would appreciate
hearing what others have to say on this matter. Another question.  Is there
an official 'interpreter' of RFCs or is it just left up to the concensus of
the majority?

Thanks in advance.
--
Dan Ehrlich - Sr. Systems Programmer - Penn State Computer Science
<ehrlich@cs.psu.edu>/Voice: +1 814 863 1142/FAX: +1 814 865 3176