topic Re: escaping characters in mail addresses in Operating System - OpenVMS

escaping characters in mail addresses

Tim Nelson — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:20:15 GMT

Anyone know how to escape meta characters in VMS mail ? Our MS Exchange server has some mail dist lists that start with special charaters.

i.e.
MAIL> mail
To: *operations@mycompany.com
%MAIL-E-USERSPEC, invalid user specification '*OPERATIONS@MYCOMPANY.COM'
I know in UNIX I can do the following
mailx \*operations@mycompany.com

THanks !!

Re: escaping characters in mail addresses

Martin P.J. Zinser — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:33:44 GMT

Hello,

difficult to test locally, but my first try would be double quotes around the address, i.e.

"*operations@mycompany.com"

Greetings, Martin

Re: escaping characters in mail addresses

Tim Nelson — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:39:47 GMT

Tried that.. It does however change the error from invalid user to
%MAIL-E-NOSUCHUSR, no such user *operations@mycompany.com

Also tried
"\*operations@mycompany.com"
'*operations@mycompany.com
"'*operations@mycompany.com"

Thanks for the reply though !!

Re: escaping characters in mail addresses

Martin P.J. Zinser — Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:59:48 GMT

Hello,

as I wrote testing is difficult in this case.
One more thing to try is to define a logical name for the address and then use this in the
mail, i.e.

$ define my_op "*operations@mycompany.com"
$ mail
send
TO: my_op

Just a guess...

Greetings, Martin

Re: escaping characters in mail addresses

Lokesh_2 — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 06:10:29 GMT

Hi,

another guess..
try to put double or triple quotes, and see if it works..for example:

""*operations@mycompany.com""
"""*operations@mycompany.com"""

best wishes,
Lokesh Jain

Re: escaping characters in mail addresses

Tim Nelson — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:34:55 GMT

No luck on the double or triple quotes. Will try the logical next.

Thank keep the ideas coming.. Thanks for all so far.

Re: escaping characters in mail addresses

Tim Nelson — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:37:48 GMT

No luck on the logical define either.
To: oper_email
%MAIL-E-USERSPEC, invalid user specification

Re: escaping characters in mail addresses

Willem Grooters — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:46:57 GMT

Since "^" is the escape character for RMS, you could try that (no guarantee it will work).Just tried it, didn't get an error:

MAIL> send
to: "^*Me@mysystem"

I have no such user (I got that mesaage) but it might work if you have.

HTH

Willem

Re: escaping characters in mail addresses

Tim Nelson — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:58:03 GMT

No luck on the "^".
It does seem like the system is trying to find the user locally instead of seeing the @ . I.e. using " or ^ or \ or whatever changes the error from invalid user spec to no such user. We are getting close.

thanks thanks thanks. It is the little things that we know we can do that drive us nutz.

Re: escaping characters in mail addresses

Ian Miller. — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 10:51:08 GMT

What version of VMS? Try putting in the mail transport explictly e.g.
SMTP%"*operations@mycompany.com"

Re: escaping characters in mail addresses

Tim Nelson — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 13:10:25 GMT

That was it..

THanks Ian !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SMTP%"*operations@mycompany.com"