[boulos]

At the very least, I assume .+ at the start is a better choice.

The RFC says:

     addr-spec   =  local-part "@" domain        ; global address
     atom        =  1*<any CHAR except specials, SPACE and CTLs>
     word        =  atom / quoted-string

so I think the bit in front of the @ has to be non-empty.

[OJFord]

Yeah, I agree, I think I'd have written that myself, but I don't think I'd reject it in review on that basis. I don't agree with sibling comment that it's 'shitty', it's trivially improved sure but it basically doesn't matter - if you want it to be actually correct you need to send an email to it for verification anyway.

Otherwise we can start saying not just not empty, it also needs no other @s etc. and before you know it we're rivalling the actually correct attempt up-thread. If you just want to catch typos, encourage entering real address (not just a space or full stop to fill mandatory field) then any basic thing is something, a compromise between legibility and how much it'll catch, we know there's a tonne of (mainly adversarial) bad input it'll miss, that's fine.

[boulos]

Agreed. I should have said so, too.