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From: greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: pathalias bug?
Message-ID: <1292@ncr-sd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Jan-87 19:52:21 EST
Article-I.D.: ncr-sd.1292
Posted: Fri Jan  9 19:52:21 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 10-Jan-87 02:28:28 EST
References: <486@hao.UUCP>
Reply-To: greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel)
Organization: NCR Corporation, San Diego
Lines: 33

In article <486@hao.UUCP> woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) writes:
> I believe that after beating my head against the wall all day over this, I
>have found what appears to be a bug in pathalias.

No, it's not a bug, nor even a feature (this time).  It's even documented!
But it \is/ an unexpected interaction of two elements.  To reprise, the data:

>first @second(LOCAL)
>second .third(LOCAL)

produces:

>0	first	%s
>25	second	%s@second
>4050	.third	%s@second     # Where the HELL does the extra 4000 come from???

This last line is really:
	4050	.third	.third!%s@second
but since an element of the path begins with a dot, it is assumed to be a
domain name (a form of psuedo-host) and is suppressed in the output.  Note
that this is actually the dreaded mixed-mode (ambiguious) path.  Somewhere
the pathalias documentation claims that it will avoid creating such paths;
the way that it actually does this is to penalize such paths an extra 4000
in routing cost.

The cure is simple -- declare the domain to be @-routed as well:
	second	@.third(LOCAL)
which will produce the expected
	0	first	%s
	25	second	%s@second
	50	.third	%s@second	# really %s@.third@second
-- 
-- Greg Noel, NCR Rancho Bernardo    Greg@ncr-sd.UUCP or Greg@nosc.ARPA