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From: marcl@vax.SPD.3Com.Com (Marc Lavine)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: How serious is the at->@ problem?
Summary: "at" is OBSOLETE!
Message-ID: <3244@3comvax.SPD.3Com.Com>
Date: 15 Nov 89 05:01:28 GMT
References: <4105@phri.UUCP> <1989Nov11.171244.28119@acheron.uucp>
Followup-To: comp.mail.misc
Organization: 3Com Corp., Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 28

In article <1989Nov11.171244.28119@acheron.uucp> clarke@acheron.uucp (Ed Clarke/10240000) writes:
>I'm not sure, but will this fix the problem?  It's from the IBM AIX
>sendmail.cf.  This seems to imply that the 'at' must have whitespace
>on both sides of it to be processed into a '@'.
>
>#
>#  Turn an "at" token into "@".
>#
>#  The I macro specifies space or some equivalent char defined by the OI
>#  config option above.
>#
>R$+$Iat$I$+             $:$1@$2                         "at" -> "@" for RFC 822

I believe that the proper fix for the munging of "at" to "@" is to
remove all code that performs this action.  RFC 822 states:

     C.5.5.  AT-SIGN

        The string " at " no longer is used as an  address  delimiter.
        Only at-sign ("@") serves the function.

Hence "at" is obsolete and there's no need to support it unless you have
to process mail that is in RFC 733 format.  The configuration files
distributed with the copy of sendmail 5.6.1 that I have do not convert
"at" to "@" and in my opinion, neither should yours.
-- 
Marc Lavine			Old Internet: marcl%3Com.Com@sun.com
Smart: marcl@3Com.Com		UUCP: ...{sun|decwrl}!3comvax!marcl