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Re: [Nmh-workers] Question about RFC 2822: "A.1.3. Group addresses".

2017-10-10 15:29:22
For clarity,
I decided to use a "mail group", for example "My Group" as in this 3 line
body less test draft:
   
   From: my_from_alias_here
   To: My Group: foo@notreal.nil ;                                            
                    
   Fcc: sent                           

Of course it bounces, but in the bounce "foo@notreal.nil"
is stripped out of the To header.  

Well, this is expected NMH behavior (this behavior has existed in MH as
far back as it existed, AFAICT).  This happens in post(8) (if putadr() sees
that you are in a group, it simply won't output the address).

So, to answer your questions:

Is this behavior of stripping the addresses out of the header per spec?

This is outside of the specification, AFAICT, because this is really
an internal nmh issue; the relevant specifications only detail the format
of email messages, and nmh conforms to those.

Is there any syntax that stops the removal?

Looking at the code .... no.

Some general comments: there is no special meaning to "Undisclosed
recipients"; the RFC uses that as an example, but you could put any
group name in there in theory (in practice, though, if you try to do
that you'll get a bunch of bounces from spam filters, sigh).

And, really, a better question is ... what the heck are you trying to
do, honestly??

I have never really understood what the purpose of the group syntax is;
I mean, yeah, I've read the RFCs about them, but they deal in kinda vague
high-level concepts; I don't really understand how to translate those
words into actual code.  What the original authors of MH decided was that
if you see the group syntax in a draft file, assume the author wanted to
obscure the recipients of the message.  In theory we could come up with
some syntax that prevented that from happening, but I for one would like
to understand what the goal is before we made such a change.

--Ken

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