fix issue with empty authors strings

helper.shorten_authors_string was not able to deal with nonempty whitespaces only as author's
realnames.
cf issue #530.

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/alot/helper.py b/alot/helper.py
index 6cb8d82c..2df22493 100644
--- a/alot/helper.py
+++ b/alot/helper.py
@@ -5,7 +5,6 @@
 from datetime import timedelta
 from datetime import datetime
 from collections import deque
-from string import strip
 import subprocess
 import shlex
 import email
@@ -179,7 +178,9 @@ def shorten_author_string(authors_string, maxlength):
     short_names = len(authors_string) > maxlength
     for au in authors_string.split(", "):
         if short_names:
-            authors.append(strip(au.split()[0]))
+            author_as_list = au.split()
+            if len(author_as_list) > 0:
+                authors.append(author_as_list[0])
         else:
             authors.append(au)
 
@@ -187,6 +188,9 @@ def shorten_author_string(authors_string, maxlength):
     # concatenated using commas for the final formatted author_string.
     authors_chain = deque()
 
+    if len(authors) == 0:
+        return u''
+
     # reserve space for first author
     first_au = shorten(authors.popleft(), maxlength)
     remaining_length = maxlength - len(first_au)