I have a question about a couple of the productions in section 4.4 of RFC
2822 entitled "Obsolete Addressing." Based on my reading of RFC (2)822,
every message is required to have a "From:" address. The relevant production
from RFC 822 is:
authentic = "From" ":" mailbox ; Single author
/ ( "Sender" ":" mailbox ; Actual submittor
"From" ":" 1#mailbox) ; Multiple authors
; or not sender
This production, along with section 2.7 of RFC 822, indicate that this means
"From:" contains one or more mailboxes, separated by commas; however, RFC
2822 seems to indicate otherwise. The relevant productions from RFC 2822
are:
from = "From:" mailbox-list CRLF
mailbox-list = (mailbox *("," mailbox)) / obs-mbox-list
The first option for the mailbox-list production agrees with the RFC 822
production but for the fact that it doesn't allow for consecutive ','s (i.e.
null elements, as described in section 2.7 of RFC 822). The confusion on my
part arises when I consult the obs-mbox-list production:
obs-mbox-list = 1*([mailbox] [CFWS] "," [CFWS]) [mailbox]
Again, if my reading of RFC 2234 is correct, this means that obs-mbox-list
must consist of at least one comma, but that's it. It doesn't seem to
require any addresses at all. If it is supposed to match the syntax of RFC
822, I would think it should be something closer to:
obs-mbox-list = mailbox *([CFWS] "," [CFWS] [mailbox])
I often have troubles divining what RFC 822 intends so I'm not sure if the
<l>#<m>element syntax allows the list to end (or start) with a comma, but I
still don't see how the obs-mbox-list production from RFC 2822 is correct.
The same problem exists in the obs-addr-list production.
I hope that I have made myself understood and that I haven't missed
something obvious. If so, I apologize for wasting everyone's time.