[Exim] Dots in local parts

Top Page
Delete this message
Reply to this message
Author: Peter N Lewis
Date:  
To: exim-users
Old-Topics: [Exim] dynamic local_scan, sa-exim, acls, and other stuff
Subject: [Exim] Dots in local parts
43.16 Dots in local parts

RFC 2822 forbids empty components in local parts. That is, an
unquoted local part may not begin or end with a dot, nor have two
consecutive dots in the middle. However, it seems that many MTAs do
not enforce this, so Exim permits empty components for compatibility.

I wonder if this should be made a compatibility switch, disallowing
them by default? The reason is, in my (admittedly naive)
implementation, I have been doing file existence tests with the
local_part, and I just noticed that there are occasionally some .
files in the directory (not to mention . and .. of course). The file
tests pass with local parts like ., .., and on Mac OS X typically
.DS_Store and such as well.

I'll add a deny in myself:

   deny    local_parts   = ^[.]


Alternatively to making it a configuration option akin to
percent_hack_domains, adding the line above (or like) to the default
configuration might not be a bad idea? BTW, the pattern ^\. did not
work (it denied everything) - should it?

Thanks,
    Peter.


--
<http://www.interarchy.com/> <http://download.interarchy.com/>