ietf-smtp
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Parsing a header

2007-12-03 07:37:44

Paul Smith writes:
At 12:29 03/12/2007, you wrote:
Paul Smith wrote:
How do you think you should parse this header according to RFC 2822?
From: Joe \(Joseph\) Bloggs <joe(_at_)joe(_dot_)com>

My view is why are you parsing the display name?

To display in an email client.

In a somewhat similar case, I first do real 822 parsing, then if that fails, I scan for "@", and from each "@" left and right until I hit ",", EOL, BOL, "<" or ">". If I hit the right number of the right things around each "@", and the localpart and domain seem sensible, I assume that I've found all the email addresses in the header field and disregard the display-names.

In case of the field you quote I'd probably end up displaying just

    From: joe(_at_)joe(_dot_)com

This fallback isn't perfect, but it's also not too complex and it finds the significant data in a lot of bad header fields. And who cares, really? If anyone really wants the display-name to be displayed, let him/her encode it according to RFC 822.

Arnt

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>