[Info-vax] bizarre SMTP problem

[Arne Vajhøj]

Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply wrote:
> In article <176uZD2KcidF-pn2-PXhqF33pn2BN at rikki.tavi.co.uk>, "Bob Eager"
> <rde42 at spamcop.net> writes: 
>>> aka: the + seems to be used as a "," to delimit multiple destinations
>> 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.
> 
> I agree.  The parsing order is wrong.  Without the quotes, the presence 
> of "@" within the address triggers SMTP processing ("@" at the beginning 
> denotes a distribution list).  However, the individual addresses are 
> parsed first.  It obviously needs to be the other way around, i.e. first 
> check for "@" embedded and then assume the whole thing is one address.

I think it would be very confusing to determine the address separator
based on the content of an address.

I am not even sure that it can be made unambiguous.

Arne