[Info-vax] bizarre SMTP problem

[JF Mezei]

Bob Eager wrote:

> Then it appears to be a bug, since '+' is perfectly valid as a character
> in an email address, as per RFC 2822 section 3.4.1.

VMSmail is NOT and never has been an SMTP mail client.  It has a foreign
mail transport to allow messages to be sent to the outside world.

the "+" seems to be a basic function of VMSmail to allow multiple
destinations to be specified on a single line. So the "+" gets processed
by VMSmail well before the address is handed over to the SMTP% foreign
transport.

So this isn't a RFC822 problem. It is just a feature of MAIL.


Note that while MAIL isn't RCF822 aware, one of the very few
improvements made to MAIL since last century was to assume smtp%
whenever it found an @ in an address. I guess they could have provide
for better support of email addresses systax at that point.

HOWEVER: removing the "+" function to allow multipe addresses to be
specified would have negatively affected some users who did make use of
the "+" sign. (was it ever documented ?)