🚀 go-pugleaf

Occasionally colleagues of mine complain that they cannot send mail to
me because it comes back with:

--------------
Subject: returned mail for "|/uhg0/chandran/alv/mh-6.6/etc/slocal"

Mail error was: 554 <"|/uhg0/chandran/alv/mh-6.6/etc/slocal">... Cannot mail directly to programs

--- returned mail follows ---

-------------

[there is NO returned mail!!]
[if they send mail to me from the command line, there is no problem.]
[if they send mail to me from mailtool (a SunView program), there is no
problem.]

One of the things that I do differently from others is that I have the
following in my ".forward"

	"|/uhg0/chandran/alv/mh-6.6/etc/slocal"

	Clearly "mail" allows users to have this (e.g. type "man
vacation).  

	What seems to be happening is that somebody resolves
"chandran" to the contents of my .forward file.  In other words "mail
chandran" becomes "mail "| slocal ... "". But it should not. It should
resolve chandran to chandran, then deliver it to the appropriate
program in the .forward file (as it does in most cases).

	So does somebody know why this happens, irregularly but often?
It typically happens when my name is in a "distribution list".
	Our system administrators seem to be clueless.

	Sharat Chandran

"GNU Emacs 18.54.8 of Thu Dec 21 1989 on toro (berkeley-unix)"
[A Sun 4]