HP OpenVMS Systems

DCL, MAIL, SMTP, and the at-sign?

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The Question is:

 
Dear Wizard,
if I can trust my memory, VMSMail used to recognize an eMail address
 specification like pauli@lotto-berlin.de automatically as an internet address
 and selected the smtp transport.
This seems no longer be the case with VMS V7.3-1. I do not exactly know when
 the aforementioned behavior changed, but I believe V6 still had it.
I found the logical MAIL$INTERNET_MODE in the documentation, but I was not able
 to coerce VMSMail to the intended behavior. Only when using the smtp%"address"
 syntax the SMTP transport will be selected. Mail seems to be confused by the
 "@" character, assu
ming a listfile specification.
Is there a way to get the 'clever' version back?
Regards,
Thomas H. Pauli
 
 

The Answer is :

 
  Without the expected example command and any associated error text,
  the OpenVMS Wizard cannot be entirely certain of the error(s) involved.
 
  OpenVMS maintains the cited SMTP parsing behaviour by default, and the
  behaviour functions on V6.2 and later.  This implies that you do not
  have a compliant IP stack installed, or that there is a problem with
  the installation, startup or configuration of the current IP stack.
  Or that there is a command syntax error involved here.
 
  If you are entering the SMTP address entirely at the DCL $ prompt and
  not at the MAIL utility prompt, you must quote an SMTP address string
  per standard DCL parsing rules -- DCL will find the @ and will attempt
  to invoke the specified parameter as a data source for the command.
 
  This DCL parsing behaviour around the indirect command file -- the @
  sign processing -- is a basic fixture of OpenVMS DCL parsing, including
  all OpenVMS V6.2 and later releases.
 

  

     

     
answer written or last revised on ( 24-NOV-2003 )
     
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