[Alpine-info] email+TAG@domain

[Andrew C Aitchison via Alpine-info]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2025, jason-alpine-info at shalott.net wrote:


>> (I use email.TAG at domain, not sure whether the . and + are magic in this 

>> case).

>

> The ".*" in your "alt-addresses" setting is not for the "." in "email.TAG", 

> it's a(n extended) regular expression.

>

> In a regular expression, "." matches any single character, and "*" means 

> "zero or more instances of the previous item."  (If you're used to 

> shell-style globs, just remember to put ".*" anyplace that you would 

> ordinarily put just plain "*" and it will probably do what you want.)

>

> TL;DR: if you set "alt-addresses=alice.*@example.com", it will match 

> alice.foo at example.com, alice+bar at example.com, alice-baz at example.com, 

> alicebob at example.com, etc.


In that case alice+*@example.com will probably match
   alice++ at example.com
   alice+++ at example.com
   alice++++ at example.com
but not
   alice+bob at example.com

If it is a modern regular expression implementation,
where '+' means one or more, alice+*@example.com might match
   alicee at example.com and aliceee at example.com
but not
   alice at example.com
!

[ alice\+.*@example.com might be the pattern you need in that case. ]

-- 
Andrew C. Aitchison                      Kendal, UK
                    andrew at aitchison.me.uk