XIMS: Comments in Addressing Fields Not Handled Correctly with Inbound Mail (251523)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server
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: 


                    :sysmail              quoted string
                    @                     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 <word>s that are separated by period (".") or at-sign ("@") and exactly 
one SPACE between all other <word>s. Also, headers should be in a folded form.

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:4/25/2005
Keywords:kbprb KB251523
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