You are right that the '821 has been superseded , but the newer RFCs mostly introduced clarifications , and new optional services to the original ones . If I read well ( and I must immediately admit that I am no specialist ... ) , the backslash escaping mechanism was maintained , though it is stated somewhere that unfortunately it did not function in the real world as had been initially planned ( cf. the RFCs defining the MIME conventions ... )
In any case , RFCs are - not- standards in the usual sense ; I believe investigation will support my claim that \ in email headers , and in email box names , is unsafe and yields unpredictable results - all the more so when one takes the POP3 servers in consideration ( \ is was never an escape char for POP3 , now what a mess when POP3 tries to retrieve a "maildrop" with an \ in its name that is filled by an SMTP that treats \ as an erase ... ) ! Let me add that this remark about backslashes was just a side comment I thought I would make at the look of the headers quoted in the original post , I did not intend to claim that in the particular case it was the cause of the problem as reported , though it might have appeared I did . -- Steph -----Message d'origine----- De : Alex Venn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> � : [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date : mercredi 16 janvier 2002 08:17 Objet : Re: Bad "From:" header format
