[Info-vax] bizarre SMTP problem

[Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply]

In article <49E00B33.D87174E5 at spam.comcast.net>, David J Dachtera
<djesys.no at spam.comcast.net> writes: 

> Such characters are not valid in UN*X usernames for many flavors of
> UN*X, nor would it be allowed on VMS. So, it seems likely that an
> attempt to verify the existence of such a user on a VMS or UN*X
> receiving end would be likely to fail.

On VMS (and presumably other systems), a valid email address need not 
correspond to a valid username.  One can do

   MAIL> SET FORWARD/USER=<email address> <VMS username>

where <email address> can be pretty much anything.  Also, one can set up 
a logical name (which need not be a syntactically valid VMS username) to 
point to a username and that will work as an email address.