Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!husc6!seismo!mcnc!xanth!john
From: john@xanth.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Bracketing in mail addresses - NO NO NO NO NO
Message-ID: <1269@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Jun-87 08:04:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: xanth.1269
Posted: Tue Jun 16 08:04:08 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 18-Jun-87 03:30:10 EDT
References: <16238@amdcad.AMD.COM> <3546@cbosgd.ATT.COM> <749@mcgill-vision.UUCP> <4106@teddy.UUCP>
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 46
Xref: utgpu comp.mail.misc:297 comp.mail.uucp:550
Summary: bangs on the uucp transport layer, ats in the headers

In article <4106@teddy.UUCP>, jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) writes:
> How about an example.  I need to send '@' mail to a site (call it
> site3) three uucp hops away which is a gateway to an '@' network:
> ... [and sites along the way handle @ differently] ...
> site1!site2!site3!user@foo.NETWORK
> user@foo.NETWORK, and dies.  What is "smail" supposed to generate, if I
> give it an address like user@foo.NETWORK if we are not on that
> network?  Would site3!user@foo.NETWORK@site2.UUCP@site1.UUCP work?
> Unlikely, or unreadable, at best.  What if MY site ONLY talks bang.
> Will site!site3!user@foo.NETWORK@site2.UUCP work?  I doubt it!
> [etc.]

First of all, you can *never* have more than one @-sign per address
if you want to preserve any sanity at all.  [Exception: route-addrs.]

This is what RFC976 and smail take care of!  A "class 3" UUCP site,
including all sites running smail, will accept do.ma.in!user, not just
user@domain.  So in the first scenario above, your mail transport
agent should generate the address
		site1!site2!site3!foo.NETWORK!user

Now with an intelligent user agent, or even a not so intelligent user
agent that just passes the address along to smail, you should just be
able to say
	mail user@foo.NETWORK
and have smail generate the above all-bang address for you.  The
RFC822 mail headers (To: line, etc.) should only have the
user@foo.NETWORK address, and the rmail commands that get passed from
uucico to uucico will only have bangs.

I've been using ".NETWORK" since that's what you used in your
examples, but you should be aware that what you're going to see on the
right side of the @-sign is almost always a domain address, which
might or might not imply any particular network.  Addresses that
explicitly indicate a network (".ARPA", ".UUCP", ".BITNET", etc.) are
using "pseudo-domains", and are becoming increasingly more rare, in
favor of network independent domain names (ending in ".COM", ".EDU",
".UK", or whatever).

You (and anyone else interested) should read RFC976 (and maybe the
"What is a Domain?" paper), included with the smail documentation.

-- 
John Owens		Old Dominion University - Norfolk, Virginia, USA
john@ODU.EDU		old arpa: john%odu.edu@RELAY.CS.NET
+1 804 440 4529		old uucp: {seismo,harvard,sun,hoptoad}!xanth!john