In my last post, I wrote about how most email validation routines are too strict when compared against what is allowed by the RFC. Initially I dismissed this phenomena as the result of ignorance of the RFC or inability to understand it, as I had trouble understanding it myself. However, I think there’s something more fundamental at work here when it comes to validating user data. It seems that many developers, myself included, choose to ignore Postel’s Law when it comes to field validation. Postel’s law states... Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from...
Raise your hand if you know how to validate an email address. For those of you with your hand in the air, put it down quickly before someone sees you. It’s an odd sight to see someone sitting alone at the keyboard raising his or her hand. I was speaking metaphorically. Before yesterday I would have raised my hand (metaphorically) as well. I needed to validate an email address on the server. Something I’ve done a hundred thousand times (seriously, I counted) using a handy dandy regular expression in my personal library. This time, for some reason, I decided to...