Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!uunet!bu-cs!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!labrea!polya!shap
From: shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.bug
Subject: Re: bug in define-mail-alias
Message-ID: <4187@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 30 Sep 88 16:36:50 GMT
References: <8809232111.AA00920@sugar-bombs.ai.mit.edu> <8809291815.AA10511@medusa.think.com>
Reply-To: shap@polya.Stanford.EDU (Jonathan S. Shapiro)
Distribution: gnu
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 35

In article <8809291815.AA10511@medusa.think.com> mjab@THINK.COM writes:
>Since valid
>internet addresses often contain whitespace (as specified in
>rfc822), the emacs function define-mail-alias should respect the
>whitespace in a valid addresse and not insert commas which turn a
>single valid address into several invalid ones.

Socrates is a man
I am a man
Therefore I am socrates.

Spaces are supposed to be valid recipient *separators.* It has nothing
to do with the internet mail standards. There *are* other mailers in
the world.

If you need to have spaces honored, the correct solution is to quote
the address:

	"fred foobar@frob.arpa"

or to use a backslash in the obvious place.  It is true that emacs
should honor both of these. I do not know if it does.

A request:

Mail is complicated enough already.  If you don't know, *ask.* Don't
obfuscate by promulgating information that is ill considered or simply
silly.  To put that recommendation in a positive light, a better
posting would have been:

	Why are spaces not honored as parts of addresses in an aliases
	file when RFC822 says they are a valid part of a recipient
	address?

Jon Shapiro