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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)
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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
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