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Because it takes system resources to deliver email. Furthermore, if people make a simple typo, why go to the extent of attempting to send something to it when i
by benguild 13y ago
Because it takes system resources to deliver email. Furthermore, if people make a simple typo, why go to the extent of attempting to send something to it when it's obvious?
- jerf 13y agoBecause it's not obvious. Ask developers to recite the rules for correct email address, and most of them will get it laughably wrong. I blame the standard, which is far more "featureful" than is actually required, but that is the way it is.
- jfb 13y agoIt's featureful because it's old. Who routes email to UUCP any more? Just look at the sections of 5322 that are devoted to "Obsolete Syntax".
- jerf 13y agoActually, I was just thinking the core error was something else; conflating routing with identity. bob@subgenius.com is a routing instruction, 'J. R. "Bob" Dobbs' is a human identity, and '"J. R. 'Bob' Dobbs" <bob@subgenius.com>' is just a mess.
- tomjen3 13y agoSo don't attempt to register an email with comments in it, or for that matter with an ip host. We need a much more restrictive standard for emails, but until we have that we have to accept that each site will have a competing not-completely-overlapping set of standards. So make sure your email doesn't attempt to do anything too funny.
- jerf 13y agoI feel about this much the same way I feel about the endless proliferation of Markdown variants; if we could all agree on one simplification, sure, but the current situation where we haven't really stinks. For instance, ask early Gmail users about putting + in the email. So while I agree with you in principle, in practice it seems infeasible. The differences bite in practice, unfortunately.