Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!athene!pcg From: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: Precedence of ! and % Message-ID: Date: 7 Jan 91 14:24:59 GMT References: <1990Dec18.142213.23820@comm.wang.com> <871@Snoopy.Logicon.COM> Sender: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 55 Nntp-Posting-Host: teachk In-reply-to: Makey@Snoopy.Logicon.COM's message of 3 Jan 91 22:59:49 GMT On 3 Jan 91 22:59:49 GMT, Makey@Snoopy.Logicon.COM (Jeff Makey) said: Makey> In article fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) writes: fitz> Many machines (including UUNET) disobey RFC1123 in this respect, and get fitz> mail delivered. Many other machines comply with RFC1123, and generally fitz> lose mail from UUCP sites that has %'s in the destination address. RFC 1123 is a horrid kludge, at least in this respect. RFCs are supposedly only meant for sites on the Internet *only*. As far as the other RFCs go, there is nothing else but the Internet. Makey> The recommendation in RFC 1123 that internet hosts give higher Makey> precedence to % than to ! (e.g., mail addressed to a!b%c should Makey> be delivered to c, which then interprets a!b) is unfortunate, Makey> because it is unreasonable for internet hosts that are also UUCP Makey> hosts to do so. On the other hand, it is good advice for Makey> internet hosts that are *not* also UUCP hosts, since they would Makey> not normally be expected to use ! as a routing operator. Ah yes, but a host that is both an on the Internet and another network and passes mail between the two is a gateway. There is no provision (let me scream this as many times as I can) for gateways to other networks in the RFCs, as the Internet is supposed to be entirely self-contained. The RFC 1123 (which is in itself a kludge) suggestion only makes sense for a mail gateway, and is totally superfluous, as on the Internet '!' *is not* a routing operator -- it is just a character in the local part of an Internet address. RFC 1123 makes '%' into an Internet routing operator, and obsoletes "@a,@b:u@c" style notation. Argh. Note that IMNHO a gateway between UUCP and RFC complying networks should interpret things *differently* depending on the source of the message -- if the message came in from an UUCP mail style network, then '@' *and* '%' have no special meaning, if it came in from an RFC mail style network, then '!' has no special meaning. Things would be much clearer if gatewaying did not happen by parsing local addresses in the RFC style world, because they were not designed that way. Note that in the the UUCP style world there is in a sense no local address part -- '!' acts as a routing, naming, and addressing operator, because no UUCP site should even look at what is beyond the first '!' in the envelope, and local delivery only happens when there are no '!' in the envelope. IMNHO bang "paths" are a *vastly* better and more flexible technology than RFC or Janet style addresses. (This paragraph courtesy of the "Campaign for a Bangista Internet"). This is all extremely distasteful. There is something rotten in the state of ... OOPS, sorry wrong play :-). -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@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