[U-Boot] patman dies cryptially when a (valid) e-mail address contains parentheses (or is UTF-8)

Albert ARIBAUD albert.u.boot at aribaud.net
Wed Jan 27 09:22:52 CET 2016


Hello Simon,

I just noticed this while adding a Series-cc to my work address which
has parentheses: running patman (without -n) will result in

	sh: 1: Syntax error: "(" unexpected

Which initially left me wondering what was happening until I realized
one of the Series-cc addresses had parentheses, e.g.

	Series-cc: "Name NAME (NAME)" <address at domain.tld>

Note that the parentheses were in the free-form part of the address,
itself within double quotation marks, which appears valid wrt the RFC.

I've tried using single quotes as a workaround:

	Series-cc: 'Name NAME (NAME)' <address at domain.tld>

It kind-of-works in that patman does not die, but the resulting address
in the mail has outer double quotes and inner single quotes, e.g.

	"'Name NAME (NAME)'" <address at domain.tld>

Aditionally, addresses with names in UTF-8 also fail, though
differently but still with a message somewhat unrelated to the actual
cause (UTF-8-name is the placeholder for a name containing UTF-8
diacritics):

	fatal: ambiguous argument 'UTF-8-name <addres at domain.tld>':
	unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
	Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this:
	'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]'

The same single-quote hack works it around, with the resulting
mail Cc:ing the name surrounded by single quotes only:

	Cc: 'UTF-8-name' <addres at domain.tld>

Cc:ing Marek who is a die-hard fan of UTF-8 names in e-mail
addresses. :)

Amicalement,
-- 
Albert.


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