In article <004b01c19e15$607ea960$1d87bdac@ibmk62> you write:
> The backslash is a common problem ! Under the simple mail transfer protocol > , it is supposed to be an 'erase preceding character" when found inside a > header field! That dates back from the times when the authors of those > protocols or RFCs had in mind slow , teletype-like , character oriented > terminals , possibly operated by a human typist who would make typing > mistakes and needed an erase character : the backslash AFA Smtp was > concerned ( RFC 821 ) . Of course nowadays hardly one does type their emails > on a teletype , but still the old RFC requirements ( and several generation > of "sendmail" agents ) take the backslashes off . In principle , a single > backslash should be represented as 2 backslashes , but wait, > > Worse even , not all MTAs and trasmission systems act equally in presence of > backslashes . I own one mailbox somewhere defined with a name in which two > backslashes are included , as an anti-spam measure - and nobody (including > me!) > ever succeded in sending one email in there , either spam or not :) by > whatever means , and I tried all the coding tricks I could think of based on > the RFC ! > > Well sorry I must repeat : backslashes in a header are a no-no , unless you > really want trouble ... I thought that the current SMTP RFC was rfc2821 and that makes no such claims. According to that, a backslash indicates a quoted character which is in line with all of the current RFCs I'm aware of. You may well be right that in practice there are some non-compliant MTAs around, but is that any reason not to adhere to a standard ? Alex. -- ____________________________ _______________________________ ( Alex Venn ) ( Success has many fathers, ) (_) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (____) but failure is an orphan. (_)
