sendmail, 4th Edition

Header Field Contents

The field of the H configuration command can contain any ASCII characters, including whitespace and newlines that result from joining.^[436] For most headers, however, those characters must obey the following rules for grouping:^[437]

Atom

In the header field, space characters separate one item from another. Each space-delimited item is further subdivided by specials (described next), into atoms:

smtp          ← an atom
foo@host      ← atom special atom
Babe Ruth     ← atom atom

An atom is the smallest unit in a header and cannot contain any control characters. When the field is an address, an atom is the same thing as a token (see Chapter 18 on page 648).

Specials

The special characters are those used to separate one component of an address from another. They are internally defined as:

( ) < > @ , ; : \ " . [ ]

A special character can be made nonspecial by preceding it with a backslash character. For example:

foo;fum       ← atom special atom
foo\;fum      ← one atom

The space and tab characters (also called linear-whitespace characters) are also used to separate atoms and can be thought of as specials.

Quoted text

Quotation marks can be used to force multiple items to be treated as a single atom. For example:

Babe Ruth       ← atom atom
"Babe Ruth"     ← a single atom

Quoted text can contain any characters except for the quotation mark (") and the backslash character (\).

Any text

Some headers, such as Subject: (Subject: on page 1166), impose minimal rules on the text in the header field. For such headers, atoms, ...