where does +detail come from?

p.lussier at comcast.net p.lussier at comcast.net
Tue Mar 30 22:17:01 EST 2004


In a message dated: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 01:02:23 +0900
Derek Martin said:

>> AFAIK it's not a thingy that was slipped in. It really is a standard part 
>> of the email addressing scheme. It's possible to disable it but why would 
>> you?
>
>No, I'm pretty sure that's not true.  IIRC RFC 822 (and its bastard
>step-cousins) only say that what is on the left side of the '@' is up
>to the individual implementation.

RFC 822 and 2822 do *not* specify this as Derek stated.  Further, it 
is *not* a standard, it is a convention, and there are a lot of 
reasons to disable it (though most reasons are probably pretty lame 
IMO :)

>I'm also pretty sure that some
>other MTAs (either postfix and/or qmail) use a '-' instead of a '+' to
>implement this feature, making it at least non-standard in practice.

I believe postfix, qmail, and sendmail all let you *choose* the 
character.  The default is '+', but one of them (can't remember which)
defaults to '%' instead (or so I've heard, I've not confirmed this).

Also, in case anyone cares, I've since found out that +detail 
addressing seems to have begun with the Andrew Mail System from CMU 
in either the mid-to-late 80s or early 90s.  Though I've not yet 
found anything definitive on this.
-- 

Seeya,
Paul
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