Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!orc!inews!iwarp.intel.com!gargoyle!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: Sendmail/UUCP Header Rewrite Question
Message-ID: <1990Oct13.033504.5267@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 13 Oct 90 03:35:04 GMT
References: <1450@ernest.ti.com>
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Lines: 22

In article <1450@ernest.ti.com> alan@ernest.ti.com (Alan Edmonds) writes:
>One of the sites I get mail from (call them site) insists on rewriting the From:
>header from user@host.domain into site!user@host.domain.  This makes 
>a reply address get really mangled.

>Is this a "good" idea?  How do other sites handle this kind of situation?
>Why not delete the last rule (in S13) and be done with it?

I consider it an incredibly bad idea to turn the From: line into a mixture
of ! and @ forms since there is no way for a uucp recpient to figure out
what it means.  Rewriting user@domain into domain!user would be tolerable
except that it encourages the next site to add its uucp name as above,
but not all sites will participate in this, so what might have started out
as a replyable FQDN turns into a bangpath leading to a non-connected bare
hostname from hell.
One of the few things I don't like about smail 3 is that it is hard-coded to
add the local host name to !-path From: lines as they pass through.
Uucp sites that don't understand domain names on From: lines should reply
back the path in the envelope From_ line anyway.

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us