Assumptions when validating user data (Re: [Techtalk] SQL learning pointers)

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 10:37:19AM +0100 or thereabouts, Magni Onsoien wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 07:44:50PM -0600, Judith Elaine Bush said:
> > I have had my email address rejected more than once because someone
> > decided a hyphen was illegal in a domain name.
> 
> Not to talk about the problems when your address contains a plus-sign -
> which isn't THAT uncommon at some sites using qmail (and other MTAs that
> have adopted the qmail-style personal aliases).

As I discovered to my cost when running a mailing list, hyphens
are also valid at the _start_ of a username used in email. This
breaks no end of scripts (and majordomo).

Other interesting allowed things in email addresses includes spaces
and asterisks. They should be in double-quotes, I think, but they
are allowed. 

I definitely agree about alloweing for international address formats
on web forms though. It's not uncommon in Britain to have a house 
name as well as a number: and also, you can have:

"Housename"
"Street name"

    ...with no number there: the housename replaces the number or
even comes in between numbers 6 and 7.

There was a good website about this which listed all the conventions
commonly met with which a form should be able to deal with. Of 
course I can not find it now. This one is interesting though:
http://bitboost.com/ref/international-address-formats.html

Telsa