On Tue, 11 Mar 1997 10:02:03 +0000 (GMT) Philip Hazel wrote:
>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.
what about loop protection or does exim do this more elegantly than
sendmail?
>
Missing the comma was a typo, I don't think sendmail would be too happy
with that either...
Thanks.
Alan Thew