Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ukma!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mandrill!hal!ncoast!allbery From: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Subject: Re: Mailer/Unix Problem Message-ID: <8237@ncoast.UUCP> Date: 12 Jul 88 00:40:42 GMT References: <88528173247.2060011f.GOLDMAN_S> Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) Followup-To: comp.os.vms Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh Lines: 24 As quoted from <88528173247.2060011f.GOLDMAN_S> by GOLDMAN_S@VAXC.STEVENS-TECH.EDU (SALLY D. GOLDMAN): +--------------- | We are having a problem here with receiving mail from UNIX systems. | | It appears that many UNIX systems or their mailers interpret a '$' as some | sort of control/special character. +--------------- "$" indicates a variable substitution to most Unix shells. Even if the character makes it past the user's shell, if the message traverses a UUCP link it will end up as the command rmail user$name@host.domain passed to /bin/sh, which will silently eat the $name and substitute whatever is in the shell of environment variable of that name. If there is no such variable that part of the address simply disappears. I haven't checked, but if sendmail on Unix systems invokes a shell to run the mailer, the same problem could occur before the message even leaves the system. -- Brandon S. Allbery, uunet!marque!ncoast!allbery DELPHI: ALLBERY For comp.sources.misc send mail to ncoast!sources-misc