bug#16946: 24.3; Rmail behaviour with a username containing "@"

[Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> writes:

> My webspace provider gives usernames that are email addresses.  So, the
> username for the smtp, pop and imap servers for this email address is "rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com".
>
> I can't use the character "@" in a username though, if it's sent to
> movemail then that program will confuse what follows for the server
> name.  I.e. if I do:-
> (setq rmail-primary-inbox-list  '("imap://rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com@myserver.com")
> Then everything after the first @ is taken to be the server address.

(This bug report unfortunately got no response at the time.)

I don't use pop3 myself, so I can't really test this.  I tried looking
in the changelog to see whethers anything has changed in this area, and
I can't see anything in particular...  but these days, we recommend the
system-wide movemail implementation, which may or may not have this
limitation.

Are you still seeing this issue in more recent Emacs versions?  Having
an "@" in a user name is quote common, so it's odd that we haven't seen
more bug reports about this if it's still an issue.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no