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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!whuxl!houxm!mtuxo!mtunh!mtung!mtunf!ariel!vax135!timeinc!phri!pesnta!amd!vecpyr!lll-crg!gymble!umcp-cs!cvl!umd5!zben
From: zben@umd5.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Is there a standard format for cross-domain addresses?
Message-ID: <622@umd5.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 29-Jun-85 13:32:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: umd5.622
Posted: Sat Jun 29 13:32:30 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Jul-85 06:15:52 EDT
References: <592@deepthot.UUCP>
Reply-To: zben@umd5.UUCP (Ben Cranston)
Organization: U of Md, CSC, College Park, Md
Lines: 38
Summary: One that is gaining ground involves the % character.

In article <592@deepthot.UUCP> jonah@deepthot.UUCP (Jeff Lee) writes:
>It seems as though a lot of problems arise when mail crosses between
>domains en-route to its destination.  Has anyone ever proposed any 
>standard formats for specifying addresses in other target domains?
>If not, then what is everbody doing in these situations?
>jonah	(Jeff Lee @ Dept. of Comp. Sci., The University of Western Ontario)
>UUCP:   ...!decvax!{utzoo|watmath}!deepthot!jonah
>MLNET:  jonah@deepthot.UWO

We are using % as a "masked @ sign" for this application.  An address
could, for example, be expressed as:

zben%umd5%umd2@umda

When umda gets it, it strips its name and changes the rightmost % to @:

zben%umd5@umd2

Similarly, umd2 changes it to:

zben@umd5

and I eventually get the message.

Within the context of RFC822, a suggestion is to use the doublequoted
string for this.  Note that there is a thing in the sendmail configuration
file that says "this is a final delivery".  If set, then doublequotes are
removed from the address before passing it to the server.  Thus one could
in some circumstances use something like:

"zben@umd5"@umd2

although we do not support this at the present time.  There seem to be
both pro and con arguments on this, and I am going to let it ferment for
awhile before I do anything with it...

-- 
Ben Cranston  ...{seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben  zben@umd2.ARPA