Widespread violation of RCF822 in "received" ?

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1 total messages Started by Michael Newbery Thu, 03 Nov 1988 23:41

#626

Author: Michael Newbery
Date: Thu, 03 Nov 1988 23:41

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This article is being posted on behalf of a friend who noticed the anomally
while writing an RFC822 parser (in FORTRAN!) I checked and he seems to
be right. The curious may wonder why a New Zealand site is forwarding
stuff from Norway but that is another story...
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Would anyone out there like to explain the following problem/conflict
with RFC #822 (the "Standard for ARPA Internet Text Messages" used in
many mail systems) :-

        Problem: The received message "id" in a "Received:" field is
        not in the specified format for all mail I have seen (and a
        friend confirms this also).

        The definition for the "Received:" field is the following ...

                received = "Received" ":"
                                 ["from" domain]
                                 ["by"   domain]
                                 ["via"  atom]
                                *("with" atom)
                                 ["id"   msg-id]
                                 ["for"  addr-spec]
                                ";" date-time

        The definition for "msg-id" is the following ...

                msg-id = "<" addr-spec ">"

        Now observe an example "Received:" field ...

                Received: from relay.cs.net by RELAY.CS.NET
                          id eu17161; 20 Sep 88 1:37 EDT

        For a start, the id is not surrounded by angle brackets ("<" and
        ">"). Secondly, "addr-spec" is defined to be ...

                addr-spec = local-part "@" domain

        ... there is definitely not an "@" sign either???????

        One might think that the definition of "msg-id" is incorrect;
        however, for the "Message-ID:" field whose definition is ...

                "Message-ID" ":" msg-id

        ... I have seen the following ...

                Message-Id: <8809201329.AA26050@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu>

        ... which is in the correct format!

What should the definition for the "id" section of a "Received:" field
be? Are there a lot of gateways out there that have got it wrong?

(My source for the RFC #822 definition is "Standard For The Format Of
ARPA Internet Text Messages", dated August 13, 1982, revised by David
H. Crocker).

Thanks
Mark Riley
GECO (Geophysical Company Of Norway A/S)
Internet: riley@gest01.sdr.slb.com
SINet: m_gest01::riley
Tel: +47 4 506437

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