Validating an email address

[Tom Anderson]

On Sat, 10 Dec 2005, Ben Finney wrote:

> Tom Anderson <twic at urchin.earth.li> wrote:
>
>> A hoary old chestnut this - any advice on how to syntactically
>> validate an email address?
>
> Yes: Don't.
>
>    <URL:http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3696.html#sec-3>

The IETF must have updated that RFC between you posting the link and me 
reading it, because that's not what it says. What it says that the syntax 
for local parts is complicated, and many of the variations are actually 
used for reasons i can't even imagine, so they should be permitted. It 
doesn't say anything about not validating the local part against that 
syntax.

> Please, don't attempt to "validate" the local-part. It's not up to you 
> to decide what the receiving MTA will accept as a local-part,

Absolutely not - it's up to the IETF, and their decision is recorded in 
RFC 2822.

tom

-- 
Whose house? Run's house!