UUCP and preservingply-to: how?

[Mike Bilow]

John Chambers wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 JC> In summary, "foo!(joe at bar)" is a legal parsing of
 JC> "foo!joe at bar"  using the  rules of one known email package
 JC> (UUCP), while "(foo!joe)@bar" is not legal using any
 JC> mailer's rules.  Whether this is relevant  to  you depends
 JC> on which email package you have installed.

You have put far more time into writing your reply than I would have done.  In
any case, my objection boils down to a disagreement with your assertion that
"foo!joe at bar" is not a legal RFC822 mail address.  As far as the software is
concerned, it is indistinguishable from a legal address in which "foo!joe" is a
mail recipient at "bar".  There is no way to know whether this is, in fact,
true without resorting to knowledge outside of the message at hand.

 JC> So I'd conclude that "(foo!joe)@bar"  isn't  a  legal 
 JC> interpretation, because  it implies that SMTP mailers can do
 JC> forwarding.

It implies that "foo!joe" is a mail recipient.

 JC> Now if the programmers that develop email software could be
 JC> taught the uses  of  parens,  as I've done above.  I mean,
 JC> mathematicians figured this out several centuries ago, and
 JC> most people who build  programming languages  have  picked
 JC> up on the idea.  But just try finding an email package that
 JC> allows the use of parens to disambiguate expressions. Oh,
 JC> well;  I  guess  I  shouldn't gripe too much.  After all, we
 JC> are still being saddled with software written by  people 
 JC> that  haven't  learned about the number zero, and haven't
 JC> heard of null strings.

Have you actually read RFC822?  You may find that there are some very
surprising things which are explicitly allowed, but which you never see in
practice.  However, the rules are very clear on issues like this.

You also may not be aware of some of the historical problems of interoperation
of mail systems which are not compliant with RFC822.  For example, Banyan uses
a "user at system@domain" format for mail.  If you are really interested in
writing long essays on how the mail system should be fixed, you would probably
enjoy getting involved with the X.500 standards people. :-)
 
-- Mike