I might bre preaching to the choir here, but it turns out there are lots of ways to write down an email address.
I'm reading data into a database that is stored in "|" delimited strings - "col1|col2|col3|" etc. This data includes email addresses. Much to my surprise I ran into errors because someone(who shall rename nameless) decided to enter their identity under the following format: "firstname lastname" <$USER|at|$HOST> VERTICAL LINES. Why they did this, I don't know. As it turns out, this particular data set has no defined policy for users entering their email, since I see the following formats... "firstname lastname" <$USER|at|$HOST> "firstname lastname" <$USER at $HOST> "firstname lastname" <$USER@$HOST> "firstname lastname" I'm sure there are other formats I have yet to observe....... I've seen the human readable "at" in email addresses, but I was NOT expecting to see someone combine it with vertical lines. But then again, I suppose it would be unreasonable of me to expect volunteers working for free to adhere to a strict policy for data entry. -Ben
