Re: The state I'm in - rfc 822 parsing.

[Sam Roberts]

Quoting Alain Magloire <address@hidden>, who wrote:
> > > # ./addr
> > > alain(the squirrel fighter)@qnx.com
> > > alain(the squirrel fighter)@qnx.com=> pcount 1
> > > 1 email <address@hidden>
> > >    local-part <alain> domain <qnx.com>
> > 
> > That's awful. Is that really desireable? It's explicitly non-compliant.
> 
> Are you sure, maybe I'm misreading rfc822, see page 6:
> 
> 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:

Yes, and if you want to display raw addresses to the user,
go for it, but why would you collect comments? They don't
mean anything. Unlike the phrase/personal/display-name,
if present, if you took that Ali address and decided to
add it to your address book, you'd get:

real name: I am  the greatestthe
email: address@hidden

Do you really want to do that? No, what you want is:

real name: Muhammed.Ali
email:...

Or for Mad Hax0r <address@hidden> you want,
real name: Mad Hax0r
email:..

And you could argue that for backwards compat. you want:
address@hidden (Alain Magloire)
to be
real name: Alain Magloire

which is what I did, but what about:
address@hidden (Return receipt requested)

do you want that to be
real name: Return receipt requested
..

probably not, but that's what one of the RFCs says to do
with X.400 gatewaying to internet mail, take the x.400 options
and append to the rfc822 delivery address as a comment.

In other words, if somebody sprinkles comments through an
address, that's rfc compliant (though deprecated in the draft
update), but the comments don't have any associated meaning
to them, except that a comment after the address may be
the personal name, and the phrase before the route-addr is
supposed to be something describing the address. Other comments
can mean anything, like, for example:

Reply-To: address@hidden(<- do the right thang...)uniserve.com

What I tried to do with Mail++ was capture the text of the object
parsed throughout the api, so you would have the bits that
were parsed out (and thus had defined meanings that you could
use to do stuff with), and the raw text, which you could display,
or whatever. Maybe I should do that here, too.

Anyhow, that's why I don't collect comments, since they don't
mean anything, you shouldn't do anything with them, so you
should never ask about them. IMHO.

> > p.s. I thought you were hunting squirrels, not wooing them!
> 
> It's always more complex when woman are involved, I could quickly solve the
> problem with a sledgehammer ....
> [[laughs 8-)]] But who am I kidding 8-), I could not hurt a fly, let alone
> a female squirrel with her offsprings.  At least she has good food taste
> and table manners, ..., probably a french squirrel.

(the following should be rot13, it's not for the squeemish!)

Yeah, I trapped 4 mice in a week in a kitchen of mine 3 years ago. The
last time I put the trap in the cupboard, shut it, walked away, and heard
it snap. I looked, and it had only it's nose caught. I walked away,
what else could I do? I barely had the stomach to see that, much less
do the right thing and put it out of its pain. It was dead by next morning.

After that I talked to my dad, the old homesteader, he suggested blocking the
mice's entry to the kitchen.  I discovered a hole at the bottom of a cupboard
they were using to get in, nailed a flattened tin can over it, and never had
any more trouble.  Maybe my neighbour had a sudden infestation, but I never
asked.

Good luck,
Sam

-- 
Sam Roberts <address@hidden>