Microsoft KB Archive/251523

= XIMS: Comments in Addressing Fields Not Handled Correctly with Inbound Mail =

Article ID: 251523

Article Last Modified on 2/22/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q251523





SYMPTOMS
Users may experience the following behavior with an incoming SMTP message:
 * Comments on the incoming To and From fields appear as part of the display names. -or-


 * The Reply to field is mixed with the comments.



CAUSE
Request for Comments (RFC) 822 section 3.4.3 allows for optional comments to accompany message fields. These comments are typically contained within matching parentheses and serve as informational data that is useful for human readers. These comments should normally be stripped by the receiving server. However, the SMTP service might include part or all of the comments in those fields.



MORE INFORMATION
Section 3.1.4 of RFC 822 is included here to provide more detail:

3.1.4. STRUCTURED FIELD BODIES

To aid in the creation and reading of structured fields, the free insertion of linear-white-space (which permits folding by inclusion of CRLFs) is allowed between lexical tokens. Rather than obscuring the syntax specifications for these structured fields with explicit syntax for this linear-white-space, the existence of another "lexical" analyzer is assumed. This analyzer does not apply for unstructured field bodies that are simply strings of text, as described above. The analyzer provides an interpretation of the unfolded text composing the body of the field as a sequence of lexical symbols.

These symbols are:

individual special characters quoted-strings domain-literals comments atoms The first four of these symbols are self-delimiting. Atoms are not; they are delimited by the self-delimiting symbols and by linear-white-space. For the purposes of regenerating sequences of atoms and quoted-strings, exactly one SPACE is assumed to exist, and should be used, between them. (Also, in the "Clarifications" section on "White Space", below, note the rules about treatment of multiple contiguous LWSP-chars.)

So, for example, the folded body of an address field

":sysmail"@ Some-Group. Some-Org, Muhammed.(I am the greatest) Ali @(the)Vegas.WBA

is analyzed into the following lexical symbols and types:

@                    special Some-Group           atom .                    special Some-Org             atom ,                    special Muhammed             atom .                    special (I am the greatest)  comment Ali                  atom @                    atom (the)                comment Vegas                atom .                    special WBA                  atom

The canonical representations for the data in these addresses are the following strings:

":sysmail"@Some-Group.Some-Org

and

Muhammed.Ali@Vegas.WBA

Note: For purposes of display, and when passing such structured information to other systems, such as mail protocol services, there must be NO linear-white-space between s that are separated by period (".") or at-sign ("@") and exactly one SPACE between all other s. Also, headers should be in a folded form.

Keywords: kbprb KB251523

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