🚀 go-pugleaf

[ I summarize at the end of this letter ]

> From: jwc@unify.UUCP (J. William Claypool)
> In article <126099@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> argv@sun.UUCP (Dan Heller) writes:
> >Awww, come on... don't leave 'em hanging.  You should at least summarize..
> >% has lower precedence than @, but is evaluated left to right like @.
> >It's precedence is equal to !.
>                     ^^^^^
> Seems to me that % should have LOWER precedence than !. 
...
> How about:
>     addr2!user%addr1
> shouldn't this be routed the same?
Yes, this is routed the same, but we're now speaking hypothetically
because no "working" mailer would put a %-sign an address without it
having an @-sign in it.  (see notes about non-working mailers below).
Because your address is equal to the one's I gave earlier, your
argument does not satisfy your claim that % has lower precedence than
the !.  Equal precedence means that the address parsing does not alter
due to the precense of the %.

Similarly, and because we're spekaing "hypothetically" now, this
address is equal:
    addr2%addr1!user

> >From: toddp@hp-ptp.HP.COM (Todd_Poynor)
> >% has lower precedence than @, but is evaluated left to right like @.
> >It's precedence is equal to !.
> Not quite -- "%" is evaluated right-to-left, as per the example.  There
> should only be one "@" in the address, since source routing using
Back to reality now (no hypothetical situations), %-signs should never
be used without the precense of an @-sign.  And because there may be only
*ONE* @-sign in an address, the % is sometimes used but should be treated
no differently than !'s aside from the fact that %'s are evaluated from
left to right as opposed to !'s being evalutated right to left.

From time to time, you'll hear someone whine about mixing @'s and !'s.
Well, you can get around them by using the %-sign.  This isn't a good
solution, it's just *a* solution (quality of solution here is not being
evaluated).

> >From: pcf@galadriel.bt.co.uk (Pete French)
> >From article <126099@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, by argv%turnpike@Sun.COM (Dan Heller):
> > the following are "similar" addresses:
> This is not necessarily true in the case of the second one. Another BT site
> I used to work on ran bog-standard V7 mail - and as such would not understand
> @ signs.
Ok, back to hypothetical again...  Let me premise this by saying that
the discussion about @-signs and %-signs and all this should be applied
to meachines that run -at least- RFC-822 compiant MTAs.  Attempting to
throw a wrench into the discussion by giving a broken mailer as an example
doesn't work.  If your machine doesn't understand @-signs, then users
shouldn't be using it.  If you're getting mail from remote sites that
are sending you address that have @-sign in it, those sites are definitely
broken.

> PS: If anyone can tell me where to get a copy of a mailer that will translate
>     the @ signs properly then let me know would you....
MTA or MUA?  Mush (MUA) provides this functionality to a limited degree.
That is, it will never -generate- an address with an @-sign (if you've
compiled with UUCP defined), but it will allow the user to specify an
address with an @-sign.  If you reply to mail, it always converts to uucp
format (if configured to do so).

[ summary ]

Look -- it's like this, plain and simple...
If an address has an @ sign in it, go directly to the host on the
-right- of the @-sign and pass everything to the left of it as the
"rest of the address".  This should only happen -once- because there
should only be one @-sign.  otherwise, the address -should- only 
contain !'s -- evaluate left to right and send to each host in the
path -- if it contains a %, then send to the host to the -right- of
the token you're looking at.  There's nothing about precedence since
their precedences are equal.


dan <island!argv@sun.com>
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My postings reflect my opinion only -- not the opinion of any company.