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Re: abnf for <atext> in RFC 5321?

2011-05-11 16:39:19


On May 11, 2011, at 2:13 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote:




On 5/11/2011 2:04 PM, SM wrote:
Hi Dave,
At 13:15 11-05-2011, Dave CROCKER wrote:
<atext> seems to be an undefined rule in RFC 5321.

This is being noticed in a couple of different fora, so it's worth
resolving/fixing.

It is mentioned in a message to YAM (
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/yam/current/msg00542.html ) and also on

yup.  it /is/ showing up as an issue in multiple venues.


this mailing list. There was a reply (
http://www.imc.org/ietf-smtp/mail-archive/msg06161.html ).

that notes suggests:

I believe that
there is a statement that any productions that cannot be found
are defined either in the base ABNF spec or in 5322.

But I can find no such 'default' statement in 5322 (or 2821).

5321 4.1.2 says, immediately prior to the only mention of atext:

Terminals not defined in
   this document, such as ALPHA, DIGIT, SP, CR, LF, CRLF, are as defined
   in the "core" syntax in Section 6 of  RFC 5234 [7] or in the message
   format syntax in RFC 5322 [4].

5322 defines atext in section 3.2.3.

Cheers,
  Steve