On Mon, 10 Mar 1997, Alan Thew wrote:
> I've seen no mention (grepped for it) in the main document. What does
> exim do if this is the first character in a .forward file? Does it treat
> it the same way as sendmail?
It does not treat the first character *of the file* specially, but it
does ignore \ if it appears as the first character of an unqualified
local_part (i.e. if there is no "@" in the address) in a forward file.
This is mentioned in the documentation, but rather obscurely. I will
make it more prominent if I can. See chapter 21, second paragraph:
... A backslash before an unqualified local part is permitted for
compatibility with other mailers, but causes an error if it appears
before a qualified address...
I've just realized that there may be misunderstandings over the word
"qualified", which is used ambiguously for two things: (a) the
qualification of a local part with a domain, and (b) the qualification
of the first component of a domain with the following parts. Sigh.
"Domain" itself is confusing enough...
> The standard is a vacation forward file I suppose...
> \user "|/usr/ucb/vacation user"
This would not work with Exim. You must have
\user, "|/usr/ucb/vacation user"
or
\user
"|/usr/ucb/vacation user"
since Exim insists on comma or newline separators. But you don't have to
include the \ characters.
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
ph10@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@??? England. Phone: +44 1223 334714
