RFC2821 clarifies SMTP DATA <CRLF>.<CRLF> question

RFC2821 clarifies SMTP DATA <CRLF>.<CRLF> question

[Steven E. Harris]

Some of you may recall the thread¹ from a few months ago concerning
the SMTP DATA command's treatment of the "<CRLF>.<CRLF>" terminator as
described in RFC821. Today, thanks to Slashdot, I took a look at the
recently-published RFC2821. It looks as though the editors noticed our
troubles - or at least that our difficulty interpreting it was not
unique. The changes in Section 4.1.1.4 confirm our eventual
conclusions. Here's a snippet:

,----[ RFC2821 4.1.1.4 ]
| The mail data is terminated by a line containing only a period, that
| is, the character sequence "<CRLF>.<CRLF>" (see section 4.5.2).  This
| is the end of mail data indication.  Note that the first <CRLF> of
| this terminating sequence is also the <CRLF> that ends the final line
| of the data (message text) or, if there was no data, ends the DATA
| command itself.  An extra <CRLF> MUST NOT be added, as that would
| cause an empty line to be added to the message.  The only exception to
| this rule would arise if the message body were passed to the
| originating SMTP-sender with a final "line" that did not end in
| <CRLF>; in that case, the originating SMTP system MUST either reject
| the message as invalid or add <CRLF> in order to have the receiving
| SMTP server recognize the "end of data" condition.
`----

I haven't read the whole RFC to see if there are other comments that
address our original question. The above paragraph left me satisfied
with both the RFC and the competence of this group's participants.


Footnotes: 
¹ http://www.gnus.org/list-archives/ding/200101/msg00493.html

-- 
Steven E. Harris        :: seh@speakeasy.org
GnuPG                   :: 0x70248E67

Re: RFC2821 clarifies SMTP DATA <CRLF>.<CRLF> question

[Steven E. Harris]

The follow-up discussion to the original posting I mentioned took a
while to get going. You can see the thread¹ rooted in the February
archive.


Footnotes: 
¹ http://www.gnus.org/list-archives/ding/200102/threads.html#00088

-- 
Steven E. Harris        :: seh@speakeasy.org
GnuPG                   :: 0x70248E67