On Wed, 25 Mar 1998, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
> That's only half the relevant test, but your doing it reminded me that I
> have sendmail 8.8.7/8.8.7 sitting on RedHat Linux on a test name server
> right next to me. So,
>
> # sendmail -t j.goldberg@???
> To: j.goldberg@???,goldberg@???
> Subject: blah
>
> blah
> ^D
>
> Does get delivered to
>
> j.goldberg@???
> and
> goldberg@???
It is certainly beginning to look as though the sendmail documentation
has been very wrong, possibly for years. I have been sent the following
extract from the 8.8.8 manpage
-t Read message for recipients. To:, Cc:, and Bcc: lines will
be scanned for recipient addresses. The Bcc: line will be
deleted before transmission. Any addresses in the argument
list will be suppressed, that is, they will not receive
copies even if listed in the message header.
That's pretty unambiguous, isn't it? However, a test on 8.8.8 apparently
also shows it to be false. What is going on here?
> It looks like the ambiguity of the description of sendmail's behavior
> in various bits of the sendmail documentation indirectly led Philip to put
> the wrong behavior into exim.
It also confused the author of smail, because it behaves like Exim and
indeed that was what I copied.
> So, when -t is used any command line argument is treated as an address
> to deliver to. Addresses on the command line are NOT an exception list.
Changing Exim to behave like that is trivial. The work consists of
deleting about 10 lines of code. The only question is should the change
be made, and if so, should it be unconditional or should there be an
option, and if so, what should the default state be? Given the weird
state of sendmail, I guess it should certainly be an option.
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
ph10@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@??? England. Phone: +44 1223 334714
--
*** Exim information can be found at
http://www.exim.org/ ***
