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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!harpo!decvax!decwrl!sun!gnu
From: gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: quotes in addresses
Message-ID: <1102@sun.uucp>
Date: Wed, 16-May-84 05:31:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.1102
Posted: Wed May 16 05:31:07 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 17-May-84 05:38:50 EDT
References: <1805@mit-eddie.UUCP> <257@uwvax.ARPA> <1826@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 22

One of the mistakes made by RFC822 was re-suggested recently by Greg
Skinner -- non-nestable quotes in addresses:

   ...!seismo!"hao!...!sri-unix!enduser@endarpahost.arpa"

This works fine in simple cases but the lossage is that the quotes do
not nest.  Suppose your host received the above address and wanted to
pass it on to another host with different conventions.  The obvious
thing would be:

   mysite!"...!seismo!"hao!...!sri-unix!enduser@endarpahost.arpa""

but you can't tell whether the first two quotes match, or the first one
and the last one.  This is part of why we have problems embedding !, @,
and % addresses inside each other -- if quotes worked, you could hide
the special characters.

If you really want to implement nestable quotes, use [] or {}.  There
is already an assigned meaning for () and <> in addresses.  There is
also an assigned meaning for [] in a host name (numeric internet
address), so for simplicity {} should be used.