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