[Dovecot] Dovecot RFC non-compliance: Mailbox names

[Tony Kay]

Hi,

I think I already know the answer to this and I agree with it, but I have a question about "invalid" mailbox naming decisions in dovecot. Technically, RFC3501 (Section 5.1, pg. 18, client consideration 3) says that * and % are legal in mailbox names, though it implicitly discourages their use. We just migrated to dovecot, and unfortunately have a few users who used * in their mailbox naming (which worked on our old IMAP server). 

I looked in the mailing list and source comments, but I could not find any discussion.

Was there any discussion about the imap/commands-util.c:48?

46:   /* make sure it even looks valid */
47:   sep = mail_storage_get_hierarchy_sep(storage);
48:   if (*mailbox == '\0' || strspn(mailbox, "\r\n*%?") != 0) {
49:      client_send_tagline(cmd, "NO Invalid mailbox name.");

which is technically not RFC-compliant? I have a feeling it fixes much more important things than it breaks (i.e. LIST/LSUB), but then again we never had complaints from people using those characters in names until they stopped being supported.

--
Anthony Kay
University Computing Center
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