Importing Mails without "to" header

[Ian Eiloart]

--On 15 February 2008 17:18:26 +0000 Phil Chambers 
<P.A.Chambers at exeter.ac.uk> wrote:

>
>> This is valid:         To: undisclosed recipients :;
>> This is not:           To: <undisclosed recipients>
>>
>
> I would say that the former is not actually valid, though the syntax
> looks  correct. RFC2822 section 3.6.3 says that To:, Cc: and Bcc: must
> contain at  least one address.

Formally, it says:
    to              =       "To:" address-list CRLF

And, section 3.4 says:
    address         =       mailbox / group
and
    group           =       display-name ":" [mailbox-list / CFWS] ";"

So, "To: undisclosed recipients :;" does match the formal specification. 
There's also an example of such a Cc: header in A.1.3

> The above does not contain an address.

It does, in the sense that an "address" is defined in section 3.4. It's not 
required, but it is useful for the recipient to get a clue that the other 
recipients are explicitly undisclosed. It's also useful to include a more 
descriptive display-name in some cases: for example, if a university sends 
a message to all students, it might want to use the headers "To: all 
students:;" in an effort to avoid a flurry of redundant forwarding 
activity.

> None of the three is  required, so if there is to be no recipient address
> in the header, the To: and  Cc: lines should be absent.  (If I remember
> correctly, RFC822 did require  either To: or Cc: to be present.)
>
> Phil.
> ---------------------------------------
> Phil Chambers (postmaster at exeter.ac.uk)
> University of Exeter
>



-- 
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
x3148