[Dovecot] Address with whitespace shows as ""@MISSING_DOMAIN

[Chris Wakelin]

It seems that Dovecot gets confused when presented with a header like:

From:    someone at somewhere.org

i.e. with leading whitespace and no "friendly name"
This shows up as ""@MISSING_DOMAIN in clients, such as Pine, that 
believe what Dovecot tells them rather than parsing the headers 
themselves (e.g. Thunderbird).

Here's a sample IMAP session:

xyz FETCH 728 ENVELOPE
* 728 FETCH (ENVELOPE ("Tue, 22 Mar 2005 10:10:50 +0100 (BST)" "Test" 
((NIL NIL "" "MISSING_DOMAIN")) ((NIL NIL "c.d.wakelin" 
"reading.ac.uk")) ((NIL NIL "" "MISSING_DOMAIN")) ((NIL NIL "" 
"MISSING_DOMAIN")) NIL NIL NIL 
"<Pine.GSO.3.96.1010704101043.17798B-100000 at suma3>"))
xyz OK Fetch completed.

Here's UW-IMAP on the same mailbox:

. FETCH 729 ENVELOPE
* 729 FETCH (ENVELOPE ("Tue, 22 Mar 2005 10:10:50 +0100 (BST)" "Test" 
((NIL NIL "c.d.wakelin" "reading.ac.uk")) ((NIL NIL "c.d.wakelin" 
"reading.ac.uk")) ((NIL NIL "c.d.wakelin" "reading.ac.uk")) ((NIL NIL 
"c.d.wakelin" "reading.ac.uk")) NIL NIL NIL 
"<Pine.GSO.3.96.1010704101043.17798B-100000 at suma3>"))
. OK FETCH completed

I'm not sure I read the RFC correctly, but it looks like whitespace is 
allowed (and if it wasn't, I'd expect our MTA, Exim to fix it on 
delivery).

There's a particular member of one of the UK academic computing mailing 
lists who always seems to do this, but I'm not sure how common a 
problem it is!

Best Wishes,
Chris

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Christopher Wakelin,                                c.d.wakelin at reading.ac.uk
IT Services Centre, The University of Reading,       Tel: +44 (0)118 378 8439
Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 2AF, UK                   Fax: +44 (0)118 975 3094