[comp.mail.headers] Is dot valid in address for indicating absolute domain name?

ulmo@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Brad Allen) (12/14/88)

Is "foo.baz.org." with the trailing dot mentioned in an RFC?  Is it
supposed to be standard?  Is it a standard?  Who likes it?  Should it
be used?  It denotes absolute (nonrelative) addressing to the local
systems I use when using a few of the net facilities.

(I have no affiliation, so ignore any implied organization)

cfe+@andrew.cmu.edu (Craig F. Everhart) (12/16/88)

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