Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site hou3c.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!hou3c!greep@SU-DSN.ARPA From: greep@SU-DSN.ARPA Newsgroups: net.mail.headers Subject: Re: User selectable mailboxes Message-ID: <350@hou3c.UUCP> Date: Wed, 29-Feb-84 12:01:00 EST Article-I.D.: hou3c.350 Posted: Wed Feb 29 12:01:00 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 2-Mar-84 07:41:50 EST Sender: ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist) Lines: 18 To: DPK@BRL-VGR, Reilly@UDEL-RELAY, Steve@UCL-CS Cc: Header-People@MIT-MC In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 28 Feb 84 23:30:00 EST. I modified the delivery part of Rand MH to do something similar, although I used "." instead of "=", e.g. "greep.foomail" means user greep, mailbox foomail. What then happens is that if the recipient has specified his own program to handle his incoming mail (this was already part of MH), one of the arguments that is passed to that program is the mailbox, in this case "foomail". The program can do whatever it wants with the message. If the address consists of a user name with no mailbox, then the argument defaults to "inbox". If the user does not have his own program to handle incoming mail, then the part after the period is ignored and the mail all goes in one place. This is how we handle bboards. For example, "dsn-WorkS" is aliased to "news.works". There is a fake user called "news" which has a shell file to handle incoming mail. The shell program makes sure that the mailbox specified exists and then puts the message in it. If the mailbox isn't valid, the program returns a non-zero return code which tells the mailer to notify the sender of the error by sending back a message, which will include any error messages that were output by the program.