how to deal with Spaces in an email address

[Scott Palmer_1]

Does anyone know how to deal with spaces in an email alias?
the email alias is on Exchange and I am trying to send an email to the alias.
An example of the alias is:
IT FOOBAR-TESTING@foo.com

Regards
Scott Palmer

[Ivan Ferreira]

Try using mail "IT FOOBAR-TESTING@foo.com".

[Sandman!]

How about quoting the string that contains spaces..."IT FOOBAR-TESTING"

regards!

[A. Clay Stephenson]

AS with all whitespace in scripting the answer is quotes. "XXX YYY@ZZZ.com"

[Scott Palmer_1]

Quoting doesnt seem to fix the problem
sendmail sees the spaces as white space and inserts a comma. if i add the sendmail flag -oobool (to start using old style headers) then I can quote the word address and that is fine, but If i use the sendmail with a -v i see that the space is getting translated to a period.
sendmail -v -oobool "IT FOOBAR-TESTING@foo.com" comes out to be IT.FOOBAR-TESTING@foo.com

Regards

[Sandman!]

Does escaping it with a backslash work?

IT\ FOOBAR-TESTING@foo.com

[Scott Palmer_1]

No it doesn't, it just sends two emails,
one for "IT\" and one for "FOOBAR-TESTING"

this to me is a perplexing problem, and probably a sendmail configuration issue.

Regards

[Sandman!]

Look in your /etc/mail/sendmail.cf and search for the "O BlankSub=." parameter and try tweaking it until you are able to send mail out.

regards!

[Sandman!]

Yet another thing you can do is to put the address in single quotes instead of double quotes...

'IT FOOBAR-TESTING@foo.com'

[Scott Palmer_1]

Been there too, same results.
I have tried quoting the whole address with single and double quotes. I have tried quoting the title infront of the @ with both single and double quotes. The same strange behavior, it is as if sendmail is ignoring the quotation marks unless i put the -oobool option on, and then the space is replaced with a period.

Scott

[Wayne Patton_1 · Accepted solution]

Check out this web page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_address

If it's correct, then a SPACE is not a valid character for an email address. It points to RFC 2822 which for me is very difficult to read. But if the wikpedia summary is accurate, then a space is not a valid character to use, and you should get the email aliases changed to use valid characters.

-wayne

[Jeff_Traigle]

That's kind of what I was thinking too, Wayne. I've never known spaces to be valid in the username portion of email addresses. Of course, with the way things change over time, I don't always trust my memory or what I knew as fact once upon a time either. :)

[Jeff_Traigle]

Might also look at the following:

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html

It explains the replacement of . for spaces in section 6.2.

[Sandman!]

Scott,

Set parameter "O BlankSub=" in your /etc/mail/sendmail.cf; quote the address on the command line and use the -oobool switch.

regards!

[Scott Palmer_1]

Comments and folding white
space SHOULD NOT be used around the "@" in the addr-spec.

The sendmail.cf seems to work even though the mail is rejectd as unknow sender. However I think i shall make the network folks conform to the standards.

Thanks for All the help

Regards

Scott Palmer

[Scott Palmer_1]

Comments and folding white space SHOULD NOT be used around the "@" in the addr-spec.

this comes from the RFC2822, I think i will make the Microsoft Exchange folks comply with the standard.

Thanks Again for the quick responses

Scott Palmer