From: Alan Barrett <barrett@daisy.ee.und.ac.za>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 22:53:25 PST
To: Jon 'Iain' Boone <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Subject: Re: SCHEME for FULL-SPEC RETURN PATH
In-Reply-To: <9402150359.AA01529@igi.psc.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9402150840.A21653-0100000@daisy.ee.und.ac.za>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Mon, 14 Feb 1994, Jon 'Iain' Boone wrote:
>  After referencing my copy of RFC 822, it doesn't seem (after a
>  quick glance) to allow for user+misc@foo.bar.edu

RFC 822 says nothing about the interpretation of the "local-part" of an
address.  (Actually, it says "The local-part [...] is understood to be
whatever the receiving mail protocol server allows.")  RFC 822 also says
that the "+" character is permitted to appear within an unquoted "atom" as
part of an address.  In other words, RFC 822 allows addresses of the form
user+misc@domain (with some restrictions on the form of the "user+misc"
string), but says nothing about how they should be interpreted. 

It is currently fashionable to treat mail to "user+misc@domain" similarly
to mail to "user@domain", with the "misc" string being somehow made
available for extra interpretation by the delivery software; but there is
no Internet standard for this. 

--apb (Alan Barrett)