Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!eecae!cps3xx!rang
From: rang@cpsin3.cps.msu.edu (Anton Rang)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: sendmail parsing questions: "%"
Message-ID: <2702@cps3xx.UUCP>
Date: 24 Apr 89 18:57:22 GMT
References: <357@anvil.oz> <701@arisia.Xerox.COM> <1635@ur-cc.UUCP> <oYImy1y00VsL80WYtI@andrew.cmu.edu> <27172@cornell.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@cps3xx.UUCP
Reply-To: rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu (Anton Rang)
Organization: Michigan State University, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 23
In-reply-to: parmelee@wayback.cs.cornell.edu's message of 24 Apr 89 17:17:41 GMT

Just to add my own thoughts on this matter..."@" identifies a host to
send the current message to.  Everything to the left (whether there is
a "%" or not) should be sent to that host (ignoring the UUCP "!"
problem).
  If the destination host wants to handle "%", that's fine.  The way
that we (and most other sites) seem to interpret it is:

  Received mail address is "user%percent-host@at-host"...
  becomes outgoing mail "user@percent-host" from the at-host.

This is useful for local hosts when dealing with "dumb" mailers.  For
instance, my local mail address is "rang@cpsin3.cps.msu.edu".  This
isn't registered in the host tables (though it is in the domain
system).  On systems without host tables, they can send to
"rang%cpsin3@cpswh.cps.msu.edu" or "rang%cpsin3.cps.msu.edu@cpswh.cps.msu.edu"
(for instance)--cpswh is our registered host.
  I believe that most of the relay sites (uunet, relay.cs.net) treat
these types of addresses the same way.  "!" is a whole other matter....

+---------------------------+------------------------+---------------------+
| Anton Rang (grad student) | "VMS Forever!"         | rec.music.newage is |
| Michigan State University | rang@cpswh.cps.msu.edu | under discussion... |
+---------------------------+------------------------+---------------------+