Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!mcdchg!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Fullname capability in smail 3.x?
Message-ID: <1990Aug09.174338.14372@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 9 Aug 90 17:43:38 GMT
References: <201@dynasys.UUCP>
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Lines: 37

In article <201@dynasys.UUCP> jessea@dynasys.UUCP (Jesse W. Asher) writes:
>I just installed smail 3.1.18.1 and I've noticed some differences that
>I have questions about.  First, I liked the fullname function in smail 2.5.
>You just run nptx and stick the results in the fullnames file.  I
>couldn't even find nptx or any mention of full name functions.  Is this
>implemented in smail 3.x and, if so, how?

>In a related question:  I decided to use nptx from smail2.5 and use the
>results in the alias file.  I would, however, like to keep the file with
>the full name aliases in some other file.  Is there a way I can specify
>in the aliases file to look in another specified file?  In other words,
>how can I keep multiple aliasing files?  Thanx much.

You can use multiple alias files with smail 3 by modifying the "directors"
file.  Just duplicate the "aliases:" entry with a different name and
appropriate "file = other_aliasfile".  However, it would be more efficient
to just merge the files.  Using the dbm or binary search technique it
is not a great deal slower to search a large file,  and the smail
distribution includes some tools to manage the alias files so you could
maintain separate files for manual editing but automatically merge for
runtime access by making some simple changes to the "newaliases" shell
script.
Smail 3 restarts its lookup process anytime it finds a match which
does not expand to the same thing as the item that produced it.  This
allows aliases to refer to other aliases, but it also means that if
you use two alias files both of them will be searched twice if a
match is found in either file.  If your intent is to use the fullname
aliases only if everything else fails (i.e. after checking the user
names in the password file), then the "directors" entry for the 2nd
alias file could be moved to a position between the "real_user:" and
"lists:" entries.  Since the "user" and "real_user" directors
mark the address as completely resolved, if a match is found there,
later directors would not be used (like the "lists" and "smart_user"
directors).

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us