Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!rick
From: rick@seismo.CSS.GOV (Rick Adams)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Sendmail and pathalias
Message-ID: <44400@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV>
Date: 22 Aug 88 18:50:28 GMT
References: <4540@saturn.ucsc.edu> <23668@uunet.UU.NET> <2390@rtech.rtech.com>
Organization: Center for Seismic Studies, Arlington, VA
Lines: 25

Please note that the method Comay referred to is a lot different
that smail or uumail (and a lot more powerful).

To begin with, the pathalias translation is part of sendmail, so
there is no fork/exec to do the pathname lookup.

However, the most important part of it is that it allows you to have
a pathalias "route" like:
	ucbvax	%s@ucbvax.berkeley.edu

Now, if you're on the internet this is incredibly useful. You can
turn a uucp path into an internet address BEFORE you decide what
delivery agent to use. This is extremely useful in a complicated
configuration. Also, because pathalias is general enough to
handle routing domains, you could even do something like:
	.span	%s.span@whatever.thespan.gatewayis.topleveldomain
and therefor do pseudo-domain routing without hacking sendmail.

If you just want to do uucp routing, smail or uumail is ok. If
you want to get tricky and do something complicated BEFORE chosing
a delivery agent, Comay's hacks are clearly the way to go.

(not surprisingly, we used them here and I goaded him into doing them...)

---rick