[Info-vax] mail puzzle (I know the answer)

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-01-25 15:22:31 +0000, Jan-Erik Soderholm said:

> Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) skrev den 2015-01-25 16:00:
>> Say you want incoming SMTP mail to user FOO to go to both user FOO and
>> to some other (internal or external, i.e. via SMTP or not) address.  The
>> way NOT to do it is to create TCPIP$SMTP_COMMON:FOO.DIS and put FOO
>> inside it, since this will result in an infinite loop.  There is a
>> workaround, though.
> 
> I would use DELIVER.

I'd probably direct the messages and the forwarding to a more capable 
mail server, and preferably one with LDAP integration, but yes, DELIVER 
would work for folks obligated to use the TCP/IP Services SMTP server 
and its accoutrements.

Phillip is fishing around for folks that remember the underscore prefix 
syntax that can be used within Mail and also used in OpenVMS device 
names and logical names — which was the origin of this behavior in Mail 
forwarding.  That forwarding can (also) be implemented with logical 
names. [1]

This syntax a half-baked logical name translation bypass scheme that 
originated in antiquity and well before the V4.0 overhaul of logical 
names.  This archaic leading-underscore syntax was intended to allow 
the specification of "uninterceptable" device names, and which now 
doesn't work the way that folks might expect, if they knew the old 
behavior.  Why does this not work the way it was originally intended?  
Because you can now define a logical name with a leading underscore, 
and that does get translated, and in preference to the underscore 
removal and its translation.  When this changed behavior of the leading 
underscore first appeared at V4.0, there were folks around that thought 
that the underscore still meant there will be no translations, like it 
once did.

Yes, I still occasionally (rarely) use it, as you can specify it in 
Mail when you're sending Mail.  This was and sometimes is useful when 
somebody had broken forwarding.  But then some of us defined Mail 
forwarding for the underscore user, too.

Do I win the Kewpie?

###########
[1] You can also use VMS Mail to probe the logical names on an OpenVMS 
system, by sending mail messages to known logical names.  You'll 
usually get a bounce message with the translation.  Fun tool, VMS mail. 
  There's also a story or two with some rather humorous shenanigans 
involving this handling from back in the DEC and DECnet networking 
days, but that's fodder for another time.



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