Xref: utzoo comp.mail.misc:2653 comp.mail.uucp:3791 comp.unix.questions:17936 comp.mail.sendmail:1180 news.newusers.questions:964
Path: utzoo!censor!becker!bdb
From: bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.uucp,comp.unix.questions,comp.mail.sendmail,news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Can not mail off-site, RTFM not much help
Message-ID: <1166@becker.UUCP>
Date: 23 Nov 89 07:59:07 GMT
References: <801@dsacg2.UUCP> <89Nov18.122827est.2712@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <1989Nov19.010922.16977@rpi.edu>
Reply-To: bdb@becker.UUCP (Bruce Becker)
Distribution: na
Organization: G. T. S., Toronto, Ontario
Lines: 34

In article <1989Nov19.010922.16977@rpi.edu> tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) writes:
|[...]
|You should be very careful, however, in mixing ! and @ style addresses.
|There is no universally accepted standard (of which I am aware; I am
|sure someone will flame me if I am wrong) regarding precedence.  The
|only operator used with third-party mailing in @ addresses is "%".
|Though many sites understand the above address and will process it as
|Jean-Francois describes, other will (not necessarily incorrectly, since
|there is no precedence rule) attempt to route the mail through attcan
|to utzoo, expecting it to be sent to henry@uunet.uu.net.  If the site
|on the rhs of the @ knows where the UUCP site is which you are tring to
|reach (as in Jean-Francois's second example) you are probably safer
|using %-style notation -- henry%ytzoo.UUCP@uunet.uu.net.

	Gack!

	Like many uucp sites, I use "smail" in its
	guise as "rmail". When it resolves an address
	with a "%" sign in it, such as (for my system)
	"someone%somesite@becker", it proceeds to look
	for the user "someone%somesite" on this machine.
	Of course this doesn't exist so it bounces.

	I know there is a patch for this, which I will
	sometime install, but the point is that a lot
	of uucp sites run vanilla smail with this result.
	"%" is *not* universally understood!

Ulp,
-- 
   ^^ 	 Bruce Becker	Toronto, Ont.
w \**/	 Internet: bdb@becker.UUCP, bruce@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu
 `/v/-e	 BitNet:   BECKER@HUMBER.BITNET
_/  >_	 Ceci n'est pas une |    - Rene Macwrite