On Tue, 15 Dec 1998, Sheldon Hearn wrote:
> > Wait for the next release (before Christmas). I have bowed to pressure
> > to make Exim compatible with Another MTA on this point. It does,
> > however, violate the RFCs.
>
> Hi Philip,
>
> Can the non-compliant behaviour be turned off with a configuration
> statement?
No. The reason for this was that Exim already allowed null local part
components in the middle and at the end (i.e. a..b@x and a.b.@x ) and so I
didn't think it was sensible to introduce an option just for the "starts
with dot" case (.a.b@x).
If people shout loudly enough, I could introduce an option to turn off
all these extensions, but I suspect very few people would actually turn
the switch, as I believe that Sendmail supports this feature. So I think
the work to implement it and the code it would run to test the switch
each time would in effect be wasted.
There are several such extensions in Exim. I started out writing it
strictly to the RFCs, but rapidly found that you can't hold that line
very long if you actually want people to use the software. The code has
comments in various places about this kind of thing. For each
non-conformance, I have to choose between
(a) just supporting it
(b) creating a switch, defaulting off
(c) creating a switch, defaulting on
I choose (a) in cases when it is in effect an extension to the RFC, with
little other impact, (b) when it seems to me to be a clear violation of
the RFC, and (c) in intermediate kind of cases.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
--
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