Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!odin!pcg From: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Paths and Precedence (Re: Question about From: lines) Message-ID: Date: 4 Jul 90 14:07:43 GMT References: <2833.2674c5b3@mccall.com> <14298@ucsd.Edu> <2836.26750678@mccall.com> <14423@ucsd.Edu> <00001FL@cdis-1.compu.com> <2999.2688d45c@mccall.com> Sender: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 38 In-reply-to: peter@ficc.ferranti.com's message of 28 Jun 90 13:56:48 GMT In article peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: I have a question about paths. What's the official word on % versus !? I'm currently implementing things so that % has tighter binding than !, and @ has looser, so: Ha. The essential point is that is part of the local address, and should *only* ever be turned into an @ by the delivery software on the target machine. No intermediate machine should ever touch it. The percent hack is precisely there as a *delayed* routing technology. Naturally there is the problem that UUCP and Internet have different ideas as to which is the target, because they have different ideas on the priorities of ! and @ (more exactly, each tries to ignore the other's routing symbol). If you have 'a!b!c%d@e.f', 'a!b!c%d' is the local part at the 'e.f' gateway. The gateway tries to deliver it to 'a!b!c@d'; at this point, if it is an UUCP machine, the mail will be routed to 'a' and 'b' then on 'b' it will be sent to 'c@d'. If the gateway is an Internet machine, it will be sent to 'a!b!c', which may or may not be a local user with a funny bangish name or user 'c' on 'a!b'. Somebody says that percent should have the lowest priority, but this is from an Internet viewpoint. Oh my, why don't we just stop being silly with RFCs, and revert to using only bang paths throughout and have gateways fake them (hahahaha) into Internet format at destination only? Note that I also prefer names as relative bang paths (a completely separate issue from routing), but I am prepared to accept domainized names just to be nice... :-). -- Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk