dovecot - Feb 2006 - Dovecot RFC non-compliance: Mailbox names

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
(541) 346-1719
GPG Fingerprint: B0DB D46A 60AF FAE7 A94A  5075 0CB4 4D88 9F4F 7F09

Sanity is a cozy lie.
 
    Susan Sontag

On 15.2.2006 20:40, "Tony Kay" <tkay at uoregon.edu> wrote:
> 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.
Hmm. I suppose it's not all that useful to deny * and % in mailbox names.
You're the first one to complain about it though :) I'll remove the
restriction from future releases.