440410 - When using commas to separate multiple addresses, there is no check if all of these are valid.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Thorsten Huber]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0
Build Identifier: Version 2.0.0.14 (20080421)

I sent an e-mail to one(!) address (mal)formed like this:

ab., cd., ef., 2x gh. <[e-mail]>

After sending the e-mail, it turned out that because of the commas, Thunderbird did read the address like this:

ab., cd., ef., "2x gh." <[e-mail]>

and it sent the e-mail to four recipients instead of one. I did then receive this error message from the mail server:

|------------------------- Failed addresses follow: ---------------------|
 <ab.>
   You must specify a domain name.
 <cd.>
   You must specify a domain name.
 <ef.>
   You must specify a domain name.

This could have been prevented if Thunderbird would warn about malformed e-mail addresses, in this case I should have put quotes around the display name, like this:

"ab., cd., ef., 2x gh." <[e-mail]>

But it was too late, since Thunderbird did send the email without warning. :/ 


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Write an e-mail with a malformed e-mail address as recipient (see details above).
2. Press "Send".
3. Expect to get an error message from the mail server, but no warning from Thunderbird.
Actual Results:  
The e-mail is sent instantly.

Expected Results:  
Thunderbird should warn that some of the "four" e-mail addresses (intented as one address, not four) are malformed.

A similar issue is described at bug 345995 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=345995).

Comment 1

[Thorsten Huber]

I just noticed that when you use the tab key instead of clicking elsewhere, the email address is deleted, so it looks like there *is* a check already built-in, however it is only performed when pressing tab.

Comment 2

[Luca Stucchi]

Well it's true, there is a different behaviour: if you click TAB after having written a comma-separed address, the (wrong) addresses will be erased, if you click elsewhere, they will remain, letting you send mails and receive the server error message

Comment 3

[ovidiu]

(In reply to comment #1)
this seams so much like bug 356032

Comment 4

[Sorin Adrian Savu]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Well it's true, there is a different behaviour: if you click TAB after having
> written a comma-separed address, the (wrong) addresses will be erased, if you
> click elsewhere, they will remain, letting you send mails and receive the
> server error message

Tab key does auto complete the addresses, and there the the addresses disappear due bug 348825.
(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> this seams so much like bug 356032

This is not a duplicate of bug 356032, relates to it just because if you would have a address like "ab., cd., ef., 2x gh." <[e-mail]> after auto complete (TAB), the result will be invalid. 

Also, for me this doesn't seem like a bug, as Thunderbird has no place in validating email addresses, there are cases where  ab., cd., ef., are actually 3 valid emails 

hth

Comment 5

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Meanwhile, for added convenience, Thunderbirds accepts ab., cd., ef., 2x gh. <[e-mail]> as a single email address input, and creates one valid recipient pill for that (TB 78).
For sending, the required quoting of the display name will be added to the msg source:
To: "ab., cd., ef., 2x gh." <[e-mail]>

So it works now :-)
Thanks.

N.B.: If you want to have @ in display names, quotes are obviously required, but with that it'll also work correctly as a single address: "buddy@sports" <[e-mail]>