Internet address syntax (and semantics, for that matter)

[Barry Margolin]

In article <2274 at ttardis.UUCP> jcf3703 at ttardis.UUCP (chap flack) writes:
>OK.  So the smart routers (I'm told sharkey has one) can interpret
>Internet addresses and help me out.  I recently received snail mail from a
>man I worked with 4 years ago, saying that his address is chenry at carleton.edu.
>So as a test drive, I tried sending something to
>cfctech!sharkey!chenry at carleton.edu.
>Those of you who know how to do this probably don't need me to tell you that
>didn't work.  Sharkey's daemon complained that there's no chenry on sharkey.

The problem is that you are mixing UUCP (host!user) addressing and
Internet (user at host) addressing.  There's no standard precedence for
the two syntaxes; it's up to the mailer configuration on any
particular system to decide.  I suspect that it is ending up being
interpreted as

	cfctech! ((sharkey!chenry) @carlton.edu)

If this is so, then it indicates that cfctech also has a "smart
router", so you should try "cfctech!chenry at carlton.edu".

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar at think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar