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From: matt@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Matt Costello)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: mtune's name handling
Message-ID: <1623@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Date: Thu, 16-Jul-87 04:02:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: ncr-sd.1623
Posted: Thu Jul 16 04:02:04 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 18-Jul-87 05:43:54 EDT
References: <16238@amdcad.AMD.COM> <3546@cbosgd.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: matt@ncr-sd.UUCP (Matt Costello)
Organization: NCR Corporation, Rancho Bernardo
Lines: 47
Xref: mnetor comp.mail.misc:422 comp.mail.uucp:703

In article <1113@mtune.ATT.COM> jhc@mtune.UUCP (Jonathan Clark) writes:
>In article <700@vixie.UUCP> paul@vixie.UUCP (Paul Vixie Esq) writes:
>>You can probably be reached at:	p.g.fox@mtune.ATT.COM
>>					pgfox@mtune.ATT.COM
>>					mtune.ATT.COM!pgfox
>>					mtung!pgfox
>>					pgfox@mtung.UUCP
>p.g.fox@mtune.att.com will work, (via forwarding to mtung!pgf) but
>anything with "pgfox" in it won't. I didn't process all my 22 machines
>user's names into smail2.5's fullnames database, and I was lazy
>putting them into the aliases database. Someday I'll put a smart
>search into smail (unless I get lucky and someone else does it first).
>Until then it's exact string matches only.

The version of smail that I developed has the concept of a Information Source,
which is currently used for three different types of information:
	HOSTINFO	contains host and domain names (pathalias)
	NEXTINFO	used to look up "adjacent" host names in UUCP paths
	ALIASFILE	to handle "local" names

One possible type of information source is a program, so that the lines:

HOSTINFO SanDiego.NCR.COM nameserver:SanDiego.NCR.COM!%s
DOTMAILER nameserver	# user names with periods processed here
MAILER	nameserver
	ALIAS		postmaster,matt
	ALIASFILE	"cache.rolo",normal,noneok
	ALIASFILE	"/usr/local/bin/rolo -U 8 -11 -p email -n ",prog,cache=cache.rolo
	ABORT		"User %I is not in the user directory"

cause local names with a dot in them and any local names addressed
to our domain name (a virtual machine) to be processed using the
"nameserver" mailer.  The real useful line is the second ALIASFILE
which defines the information source to be a program which does a
database lookup.  The released version of the rolo program does
substring matching with various fudge factors thrown in.  The new
version does a very general closeness matching that allows lots
of leeway in the name.  In particular the name Bob.Raight will
match Robert.Wrights, but with a very high cost.  If the closest
match is better than the next closest by enough margin then the
name is matched, otherwise the lookup fails and the closest 8
matches are listed instead.

-- 
Matt Costello	
+1 619 485 2926	
		{sdcsvax,cbosgd,pyramid,nosc.ARPA,ihnp4}!ncr-sd!matt