DPVC@UORDBV.BITNET.UUCP (05/22/86)
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax Subject: Re: VMS Mail Mailing-List Handler Summary: Expires: References: <12206481287.38.ROODE@IC2060> Sender: Reply-To: dpvc@ur-tut.UUCP (Davide P. Cervone) Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: U. of Rochester Computing Center Keywords: ROODE%BIONET@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (David Roode) writes: >Has anyone layered mailing lists successfully on top of >VMS Mail? What I had in mind was a foreign mail protocol >handler that would expand mailing list names into their >components and in turn deliver the mail to each component. >For example, I mail to C_USERS%LIST and the message >is delivered to an arbitrary group of people who are >known to be C_USERS. The VMS Mailer already does what I think you are asking for. If you put a list of addresses in a file with a .COM type, you can mail to all of the addresses in the file at once. When MAIL asks for the TO: address, you type an "at" sign (@) followed by the file name. For example, if your mailing list is named C_USERS.COM, then you should type the following: $ MAIL MAIL> SEND TO: @C_USERS SUBJ: C promgramming ... Since the VMS mailer expands logical names before it interprets an address, you can do something like the following to make this easier: $ DEFINE C_USERS "@SYS$LOGIN:C_USERS.COM" ! always use the one in SYS$LOGIN then just MAIL to C_USERS. If there are only a few people in the list, you could just $ DEFINE C_USERS "FRED,JOE,RED::AMY,MARGRET" and avoid having to have a separate mailing list file. Mailing list files can contain: calls to other mailing list files (just put @filename in the mailing list); comments (preceded by '!'); DECnet addresses; foreign protocol specifiers (e.g., JNET%"DPVC@UORDBV"); and logical names that translate to any of these. Davide P. Cervone University of Rochester Computing Center DPVC@UORDBV.BITNET ur-tut!dpvc.UUCP