On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, Jawaid Bazyar wrote:
> I just read in the 1.71 docs that Exim supports the ETRN command, but only
> with the '#' specifier. From the site:
>
> >As Exim does not organize its message queue by host, the only form of
> ETRN
> >that is supported is the one where the text starts with the `#' prefix,
> >where the remainder of the text is specific to the SMTP server.
>
> Couldn't the '@domain' syntax be supported by simply processing those
> messages with addresses containing 'domain', just as '#text' works by
> processing addresses containing 'text'? I.E., exim could support '@' too
> with the same code as '#' (not necessarily according to the spec - but I'd
> prefer half-assed to not having it at all).
It could, I suppose, but is it worth the work when #domain probably does
essentially the same thing? At the moment, it simply does a textual scan
of the recipient addresses; it does not analyse them into local parts
and domains. It would have to do this and it would have to record which
kind of search it was doing. At the moment, it in effect just runs Exim
with the existing -R option.
I've just re-read the RFC and remembered why I used # and not @. What
Exim actually does with the -R option is attempt to deliver any message
that contains an address that matches - but it tries *all* the addresses
in that message, not just the one that matched. Thus the string given is
in some sense a means of identifying a particular set of messages. To
implement @ (deliver only to addresses in the given domain) would
require a lot more apparatus to be built.
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
ph10@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@??? England. Phone: +44 1223 334714
--
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