403912 - Message filter subject is "Re:" works as 'contains' not 'is'

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Filters, defect)

Description

[Steve Reed]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9
Build Identifier: Thunderbird version 2.0.0.9 (20071031)

Creating a message filter where the subject is "Re:" does not catch just the messages whose subject is "Re:" but also all messages that START with "Re: (etc)".
I want to mark as junk or move to trash all messages that contain ONLY "Re:"
for the subject.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Tools
2.Message Filter...
3.using options Subject, Is, (filling in "Re:" or "Re: ")
action to take: move to trash
Actual Results:  
incoming email whose subject is, for example, "Re: earthquake", gets moved to
trash folder.

Expected Results:  
Just incoming email whose subject is "Re:" gets moved to trash folder.

Comment 1

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

At least *search* for subject is "Re:" works for me on trunk...

Comment 2

[jwq]

Thunderbird 1.5.0.13 (20070809); Mac OS 10.4.9

I've seen the same thing when filtering by email address: "is" behaves the same as "contains".

Comment 3

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Filter too worked fine whey I tried it (on a POP account). Did you use pop or imap?

Comment 4

[Steve Reed]

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9)
> Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9
> Build Identifier: Thunderbird version 2.0.0.9 (20071031)
> 
> Creating a message filter where the subject is "Re:" does not catch just the
> messages whose subject is "Re:" but also all messages that START with "Re:
> (etc)".
> I want to mark as junk or move to trash all messages that contain ONLY "Re:"
> for the subject.
> 
> Reproducible: Always
> 
> Steps to Reproduce:
> 1.Tools
> 2.Message Filter...
> 3.using options Subject, Is, (filling in "Re:" or "Re: ")
> action to take: move to trash
> Actual Results:  
> incoming email whose subject is, for example, "Re: earthquake", gets moved to
> trash folder.
> 
> Expected Results:  
> Just incoming email whose subject is "Re:" gets moved to trash folder.
> 

(In reply to comment #3)
> Filter too worked fine whey I tried it (on a POP account). Did you use pop or
> imap?
> 
I use pop.  And now, every msg whose subject begins with "Re:" gets moved
to trash folder *and* even though I removed that criteria, the same action
takes place.  Sort of another bug on bug.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

do you also see this with beta 1?
 http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/
(backup your profile first)

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

iirc Re: is a strange animal - in some cases built by thunderbird and not actually in the message header.  I don't recall the details, and searching bugmail for "re:" is of course a bust :).  But I'm not sure that's related to this problem - since it works for contains.

David?  Or perhaps rkent can examine the code.

xref bug 287271, bug 321236

Comment 8

[David :Bienvenu]

right, Re: isn't actually stored in the database subject field - it's tacked back on at display time. I don't know if the filter evaluation code would see the "Re:" part of the subject, but I suspect not.

Comment 9

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

(In reply to comment #8)
> right, Re: isn't actually stored in the database subject field - it's tacked
> back on at display time. I don't know if the filter evaluation code would see
> the "Re:" part of the subject, but I suspect not.

Then this is a candidate to Wontfix or should be set as New ?

Comment 10

[ffux]

This whole idea of hacking about with the content of a email before storing it is flawed. If messages were stored correctly this issue would not occur.

Can someone with the necessary privilages please mark this as NEW so there's at least a chance it will get picked up?

thx

Comment 11

[:aceman]

I think this is a valid request. If the original subject header contained the "Re:" then it should be possible to filter for it.

I'll check if the problem still exists in TB8.

Comment 12

[:aceman]

Ok, here are my observations:
Subject,is,"Re:" - does NOT work (bug 473917)
Subject,is,"Re: " - does work (matches plain "Re:" subject)
Subject,begins with,"Re:" - does work (matches subjects starting with "Re:")

This was on TB 8, POP3 account. Nowhere have I observed 'is' matching as 'contains' or 'begins with'. Can anybody confirm this problem no longer appears?

Comment 13

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Removing myslef on all the bugs I'm cced on. Please NI me if you need something on MailNews Core bugs from me.