Problem with email addresses beginning with 0x

[David Shaw]

On Fri, Sep 29, 2006 at 05:32:35AM +0100, Luke J wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have recently started using GnuPG. My personal email address begins
> with 0x and this seems to cause problems for gpg when using the -u
> option. I think it tries to interpret the email address as a key ID instead.
> 
> Naturally, when using this from the command line it isn't a big issue
> but when trying to gpg automatically from within Evolution or
> Thunderbird, it tries to sign or encrypt messages by specifying the
> email address as the argument to the -u option which causes the problem.
> At the moment this means I can't use GnuPG with this email address
> without annoying all the people I send emails to and myself! lol  :)
> 
> The error message I get is as follows:
> 
> gpg: skipped "0xlukej at gmail.com": malformed user id
> gpg: signing failed: malformed user id

As you've seen, GPG uses "0x" to indicate a hex key ID.  Try sticking
a "<" before the address:

  <0xlukej at gmail.com

The "<" is a hint to the parser that the characters that follow are an
email address.

David