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From: gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: pax on colons in mail addresses
Message-ID: <2128@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 18-Apr-85 05:34:43 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.2128
Posted: Thu Apr 18 05:34:43 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Apr-85 02:33:19 EST
References: <4780@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 31

Rich Wales (wales@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA or {ihnp4,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!wales) says:
>                     Colons create all kinds of problems in ARPA-land:
> (1) The colon has special meaning in ARPANET addresses under RFC822, in
>     connection with the "source-route" or "audit-trail" notation (such
>     as "<@MIT-MC:FRED@MIT-OZ>".
> (3) Another reason quotes may not help with addresses containing colons
>     is that several mail systems queue up each outgoing ARPANET message
>     with a "control" line at the beginning of the message, specifying
>     the destination host and other parameters; these parameters are sep-
>     arated on the control line by -- you guessed it -- colons.

Neither of these should cause problems unless the colon is in the
HOST NAME part of an Internet address, which is illegal.  As long as
they're in the "local-part" (after the route-addrs e.g. @MIT-MC: and
before the host name e.g. @MIT-OZ) they are fine.  The colon in the
route-addr always matches a leading @-sign, so if no leading @-sign is
there, any colon is part of the local-part.

> If you are responsible for an environment which uses the colon as a
> site-user delimiter in addresses, PLEASE give some consideration to the
> possibility of using something else which will be more compatible with
> RFC822.

RFC922 is not the problem here; the problem is Arpanet hosts that
don't implement RFC822 (eg broken quoting, not accepting : in local-part).

If you are responsible for an Arpanet environment which uses the colon
as a delimiter in mail delivery subsystems, PLEASE give some
consideration to the possibility of using something else which will be
more compatible with RFC822.  Thank you.