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!WMartin@SIMTEL20.ARPA From: WMartin@SIMTEL20.ARPA (William G. Martin) Newsgroups: net.mail.headers Subject: Re: What are SMTP commands "EXPN" and "VRFY" good for? Message-ID: <845@hou3c.UUCP> Date: Tue, 18-Sep-84 10:31:39 EDT Article-I.D.: hou3c.845 Posted: Tue Sep 18 10:31:39 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 4-Oct-84 03:21:33 EDT Sender: ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist) Lines: 36 To: header-people@MIT-MC.ARPA Cc: wmartin@ALMSA-1.ARPA In-Reply-To: Message from "Charles Hornig" of Mon 17 Sep 84 14:08:00-MDT The recent discussion of the EXPN and VRFY commands included a couple mentions of using EXPN to implement a command that would let a user discover who is on a remote mailing list. I had never heard of such a command before, but, now that I know it is possible, I want it! As a contact point at my Activity for message-system problems and advice, I have often been asked by various users who send mail to a remote mailing list how to find out the actual recipients of such mail. For lists with regular maintainers and "list-Request" addresses, it is often possible to either write the request address or locate and read the actual file of addresses via FTPing to the distribution host. (This was easy on MIT-based distributions, but not possible on BRL-based distributions, where anonymous FTP login is not allowed.) For other lists, where the maintainer is not known, it is difficult. So, if a simple, user-executable command exists that I can tell a secretary to use to find out who is on the "DMIS-Chiefs@BRL" list, I need to know it! I need such a command for our 4.2 BSD UNIX main host (ALMSA-1), which runs mmdf mail. I'd also like to find it on this TOPS-20 host from which I am sending this message. Is it there, already existing, and I just don't know what the command is? Or do I have to get the command implementation from somewhere and have our operating systems people install it? Or is this only implemented by a couple people out there and it isn't really available at all? And does this discussion, in which most people say that their host ignores the "EXPN" command anyhow, mean that, even if I located and installed the user-command to perform this function, it wouldn't work in most cases anyway? (Caught up to the heights of joy, and then cruelly dashed on the rocks of despair...) Will Martin USArmy AMC ALMSA, St. Louis, MO -------