From jason at mastaler.com  Tue Oct 10 22:12:10 2006
From: jason at mastaler.com (Jason R. Mastaler)
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 14:12:10 -0600
Subject: [Email-SIG] why is this HeaderParseError being raised?
Message-ID: <m2slhwnd5x.fsf@deacon-blues.mid.mastaler.com>

I'm probably missing something obvious, but can someone tell me why
email.header.decode_header() is blowing up when trying to decode the
Subject header of this message?  It looks legitimate to me.  It's not
a spam message, and was prodcued by Microsoft Outlook Express:

http://mastaler.com/tmp/1150650768.21756.msg.txt

I'm reproducing it with this code:

Python 2.5 (r25:51908, Sep 21 2006, 13:04:20) 
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5363)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from email.parser import Parser
>>> from email.header import decode_header
>>> msg = Parser().parse(open('1150650768.21756.msg.txt'))
>>> subject = decode_header(msg['subject'])
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/sw/lib/python2.5/email/header.py", line 100, in decode_header
    raise HeaderParseError
email.errors.HeaderParseError
>>> 



From tkikuchi at is.kochi-u.ac.jp  Tue Oct 10 23:04:07 2006
From: tkikuchi at is.kochi-u.ac.jp (Tokio Kikuchi)
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 06:04:07 +0900
Subject: [Email-SIG] why is this HeaderParseError being raised?
In-Reply-To: <m2slhwnd5x.fsf@deacon-blues.mid.mastaler.com>
References: <m2slhwnd5x.fsf@deacon-blues.mid.mastaler.com>
Message-ID: <452C0AC7.6010501@is.kochi-u.ac.jp>

Jason R. Mastaler wrote:
> I'm probably missing something obvious, but can someone tell me why
> email.header.decode_header() is blowing up when trying to decode the
> Subject header of this message?  It looks legitimate to me.  It's not
> a spam message, and was prodcued by Microsoft Outlook Express:
> 
> http://mastaler.com/tmp/1150650768.21756.msg.txt

You need two trailing paddings (=) in the encoded string.

Subject: 
=?iso-8859-1?B?UmU6IEFXOiBCZXN0ZWxsdW5nIEJhZ3RhZ3MgZvxyIEdvbGYgQ2x1YiBL/HNzbmFjaA?=
should be
Subject: 
=?iso-8859-1?B?UmU6IEFXOiBCZXN0ZWxsdW5nIEJhZ3RhZ3MgZvxyIEdvbGYgQ2x1YiBL/HNzbmFjaA==?=

In RFC3548,
Implementations MUST include appropriate pad characters at the end of
encoded data ...

-- 
Tokio Kikuchi, tkikuchi at is.kochi-u.ac.jp
http://weather.is.kochi-u.ac.jp/

From jason at mastaler.com  Wed Oct 11 17:38:37 2006
From: jason at mastaler.com (Jason R. Mastaler)
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 09:38:37 -0600
Subject: [Email-SIG] why is this HeaderParseError being raised?
References: <m2slhwnd5x.fsf@deacon-blues.mid.mastaler.com>
	<452C0AC7.6010501@is.kochi-u.ac.jp>
Message-ID: <87wt76rhfm.fsf@deacon-blues.mid.mastaler.com>

Tokio Kikuchi <tkikuchi at is.kochi-u.ac.jp> writes:

>> I'm probably missing something obvious, but can someone tell me why
>> email.header.decode_header() is blowing up when trying to decode the
>> Subject header of this message?  It looks legitimate to me.  It's not
>> a spam message, and was prodcued by Microsoft Outlook Express:
>> 
>> http://mastaler.com/tmp/1150650768.21756.msg.txt
>
> You need two trailing paddings (=) in the encoded string.
>
> Subject: 
> =?iso-8859-1?B?UmU6IEFXOiBCZXN0ZWxsdW5nIEJhZ3RhZ3MgZvxyIEdvbGYgQ2x1YiBL/HNzbmFjaA?=
> should be
> Subject: 
> =?iso-8859-1?B?UmU6IEFXOiBCZXN0ZWxsdW5nIEJhZ3RhZ3MgZvxyIEdvbGYgQ2x1YiBL/HNzbmFjaA==?=
>
> In RFC3548,
> Implementations MUST include appropriate pad characters at the end of
> encoded data ...

Thanks.  Any idea what might be causing this?  I haven't heard of
Outlook Express being RFC 3548 non-compliant before.