andrew@stl.stc.co.uk (Andrew Macpherson) (07/14/88)
This SMM:07 etc is not something that is generally known, however: You have brought up a nasty. In fact you are highlighting two of them. Firstly '%' as an address character. IT IS NOT LEGAL RFC822. It remains around for historical compatibility (RFC7?? --- read the first page of 822 if you really want to know which). Having got that off my chest, here is the associated nasty: mcvax uses it as a 'local-part' operator, and hands on addresses of the form a!b!u%l, which any Internetted (and probably any JANET) host will treat as send to 'l' for uucp forwarding. UK1.? will resolve it as @l,@a:u@b (using 822 legal representation), on the assumption that the % constitutes a mal-formed domain address. This is not usually a problem but occasionally we recieve US mail which has hopped to the arpanet and been strangely delt with... Now the other point... Mixed addresses. If you live in the uucp world only you have no trouble. If in 822 land likewise. I understand the JNETters allow % as a source-routing so they also have a consistent rule-set. All 3 have a route specification method, therefore there is neither need nor justification for mixed-mode addressing. UK1.? will attempt to gateway on the basis of rules reasonable to a host on a network, from the bits of this SMM doc quoted I assume the suggested rules are for use in uucp-land, and seem reasonable IN THAT CONTEXT. but the major caveat must be that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES OTHER THAN MAINTAINING YOUR NEIGHBOURS MAIL ROUTER CAN YOU ASSUME ANYTHING WHATSOEVER ABOUT THE PRIORITY HE WILL PLACE ON THE VARIOUS SYMBOLS. The only safe and reasonable course to take is to provide the destination address in the format required by the network you are using. Now if only the whole world would get it's act together and magically supply domain based mailers to everyone... -- Andrew Macpherson andrew@stl.stc.co.uk - or - ...!mcvax!ukc!stl!andrew "It is always a great mistake to treat the individual on the chance that he may become a crowd" -- Mr Justice Codd: (A.P.Herbert)