On Mon, May 04, 2026 at 10:01:34AM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> I'm wondering whether the RFCs give a special meaning to the slashes
> for the filename value (such as a directory separator, which should
> be ignored),

AFAICT they don't--at least not with any specificity.  However RFC
2183 does say the following:

   It is important that the receiving MUA not blindly use
   the suggested filename.  The suggested filename SHOULD be
   checked (and possibly changed) to see that it conforms to
   local filesystem conventions, does not overwrite an
   existing file, and does not present a security problem
   (see Security Considerations below).

   The receiving MUA SHOULD NOT respect any directory path
   information that may seem to be present in the filename
   parameter.  The filename should be treated as a terminal
   component only.  Portable specification of directory
   paths might possibly be done in the future via a separate
   Content-Disposition parameter, but no provision is made
   for it in this draft.

I've skimmed some of the more recent RFCs that update this one, and it
really seems like the authors go out of their way to avoid getting at
all specific about the content of the filename field, beyond the above.
There are some updates to specify non-ASCII filenames and such, but
nothing that talks specifically about what characters should be
considered special, or special handling thereof.

I would just point out that there are uses besides dates for date-like
strings, including e.g. hash directories, such that it may not be
obvious when or whether to treat such things in the filename parameter
as dates vs. path elements. [And FWIW, we use that style of date in the
US as well, though we swap the date and month; and other countries also
use it too.]

It probably makes sense for Mutt to have a function that filters a list
of filesystem-special characters, defined at compile time for your
particular platform, that get swapped in the passed-in path to '_' or
some such (that also could be platform-specific, though I'm not aware of
any platform for which underscore is unavailable).  In that case,
though, it should also have some mechanism for resolving collisions, at
least for attachments saved from the same message...

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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