Harakiri:
> Now can anyone point me to the part in the RFC that prohibits the
> "-" at the start of the local part?
You may be surprised by the difference between what the RFC allows
and what works in the real world. For example, RFC 5321 defines a
mailbox as:
Mailbox = Local-part "@" ( Domain / address-literal )
Local-part = Dot-string / Quoted-string
; MAY be case-sensitive
Dot-string = Atom *("." Atom)
Atom = 1*atext
With atext defined in RFC5322 as:
atext = ALPHA / DIGIT / ; Printable US-ASCII
"!" / "#" / ; characters not including
"$" / "%" / ; specials. Used for atoms.
"&" / "'" /
"*" / "+" /
"-" / "/" /
"=" / "?" /
"^" / "_" /
"`" / "{" /
"|" / "}" /
"~"
Although the RFC allows this, no-one in their right mind would use
a local-part that contains "!" or "@" or "'" (or most of the other
non-alpha/non-digit characters above). Postfix adds to this the
requirement that the local-part not start with '-' because it is a
security hole in shell commands.
Wietse
