Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!haven!uflorida!mailrus!bbn!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!cfe+
From: cfe+@andrew.cmu.edu (Craig F. Everhart)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Is dot valid in address for indicating absolute domain name?
Message-ID: <kXdypzy00VsLE0WkZr@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: 15 Dec 88 16:51:11 GMT
References: <5765@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Organization: Carnegie Mellon
Lines: 8
In-Reply-To: <5765@saturn.ucsc.edu>

I believe that it's mentioned in the domain-system specs, which for interchange
purposes don't care if a name is suffixed with a dot or not.  Some programs that
act as user agents for the domain system use it to know whether to try appending
local suffixes or not; I don't believe that that usage is anywhere in an RFC.
One place that it's NOT is in RFC821 or RFC822; the mail address
``foo@bar.baz.'' is invalid RFC822.  You can't append a dot to an RFC822 domain
without invalidating it as an RFC822 domain.

                Craig Everhart