BSD 4.2 Mail not RFC822-compliant?

[Tim Russell]

Hi all,

    I recently acquired the MM mailer that Columbia has ported to Unix
(it's in beta-test), and discovered a bug, for lack of a better word,
in the Berkeley mail program.

    First off, let me set things up: this is on a Sequent Balance 8000,
running Dynix 2.1.1 (BSD 4.2 and System V.2 together).  I've also tried
this on a Vax 8200 running Ultrix 2.3.

     Here's the deal:  MM sends out messages with "From" headers of the
form:

          From: Real Name <address.domain>

which, I have come to find out, is used as an example throughout RFC822.
The specific they use is "From: George Jones <Jones at Group.Org>".

     When I send a message out from MM to myself, and read and reply to
it, however, Berkeley mail generates an extra, totally wrong, recipient.
Here is a log of the Berkeley mail session (thanks to screen):

--------------------
Mail version 2.18 5/19/83.  Type ? for help.
"/usr/spool/mail/fritz": 1 message 1 new
>N  1 fritz at unocss.unl.edu Thu Dec  8 19:16  10/241 "Test message."
&
Message  1:
>From fritz Thu Dec  8 19:16:19 1988
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1988 19:15:50 CST
From: Tim Russell <fritz at unocss.unl.edu>
To: fritz
Subject: Test message.
Message-Id: <CMM.0.88.597633350.fritz at unocss.unl.edu>
Status: R

This is a test message to demonstrate.


& reply
To: unl:fritz at edu fritz at unocss.unl.edu
Subject: Re:  Test message.

--------------------

Notice the "To" line in the reply above?  This is, as you can see,
nowhere in the original message.  According to RFC822, when an address
of the form "<address>" is included in the header line, everything else
should be ignored and this should be used as the address.

    The Ultrix mailer (fergvax.unl.edu) generated this as the "To"
line under the same circumstances:

        To: fritz at fergvax.unl.edu fritz at fergvax.unl.edu

    Interestingly enough, when I tell MM to put my name in quotes, as in:

          From: "Tim Russell" <fritz at unocss.unl.edu>

neither of the mailers I tried had any problem at all.  Wierdness abounds.
Also, the problem can be fixed by including a "Reply-To" header, not
of the same format, of course.

    People at Columbia tell me they have never had any problem of this kind.

    So, can anyone tell me what could be causing this?  Is this a common
problem?  Does Berkeley know about it?  Has it been fixed?

    Sorry for being so verbose, but I wanted to make the problem clear.
Thanks for any help anyone can give me!

-- 
---------------------------------+--------------------------------------------
 Tim Russell, Computer Operator  | Internet: fritz at fergvax.unl.edu
 Campus Computing                | Bitnet:   russell at unoma1
 University of Nebraska at Omaha | UUCP:     uunet!btni!unocss!fritz