[8757] in Athena Bugs
rt 7.3P: sendmail
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Fri Dec 13 11:27:25 1991
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 91 11:27:10 -0500
From: "Jonathan I. Kamens" <jik@pit-manager.MIT.EDU>
To: bugs@Athena.MIT.EDU
System name: pit-manager
Type and version: RTPC-ROMPC 7.3P
Display type: apa16
megapel
What were you trying to do?
Send mail by piping a message into "/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t".
What's wrong:
Sendmail pulls the full name entry from /etc/passwd in order
to create a "From:" line for the message. However, the full
name is not quoted, and my full name contains a period (".")
in it to indicate that my middle initial is an abbreviation.
The RFC says that periods must be quoted in the comment
portion of an address.
What should have happened:
Sendmail should check to see if there are any special
characters in the name in the /etc/passwd file, and if so,
enclose the whole thing in "\"" (of course taking into account
the possible special case when there may be a "\"" character
in the name itself, and dealing with that in some way), or it
should just quote with "\"" all the time.
Please describe any relevant documentation references:
RFC 822.
jik
