Re: mailserver scheme, third round

Paul Hoffman (ietf-lists@proper.com)
Mon, 16 Jan 1995 14:27:12 -0800

Message-Id: <ab40a2470602100304b5@[165.227.40.37]>
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 1995 14:27:12 -0800
To: sdw@lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
From: ietf-lists@proper.com (Paul Hoffman)
Subject: Re: mailserver scheme, third round

>I agree, but don't have time to look it up today, that the spec requires
>a space after the :... Almost positive, and I've seen parsing code
>that insists on it. Just as the blank line delimits the header,
>the space delimits the tag. (Technically, the colon does, and I
>wouldn't want to try having a : in the tag, but the space further
>delimits it.)

I don't know the insides of the parsers, but I think I know how to read
RFC822. From the spec:

3.1.2. STRUCTURE OF HEADER FIELDS

Once a field has been unfolded, it may be viewed as being com-
posed of a field-name followed by a colon (":"), followed by a
field-body, and terminated by a carriage-return/line-feed.
The field-name must be composed of printable ASCII characters
(i.e., characters that have values between 33. and 126.,
decimal, except colon). The field-body may be composed of any
ASCII characters, except CR or LF. (While CR and/or LF may be
present in the actual text, they are removed by the action of
unfolding the field.)

. . .
3.2. HEADER FIELD DEFINITIONS
. . .
field = field-name ":" [ field-body ] CRLF
. . .

I don't see any space in there.

>Why reply if I don't have time to get the spec? I don't know...

You mean you don't carry a copy around with you? :-)