/etc/aliases and # pound sign

[Fred Martin_1]

I'm hoping someone can tell me, or has a sandbox server they can try this on:

Can the /etc/aliases file have a comment after data on a line? Something like this....

accounting : fred,john,sally, # comment
tim,sue,jim

salesdept : frank,jenny # comment

I'm asking because I'm writing a script that reads the aliases file and would like to add tags in the form of comments, to easily pull lines out of the file.

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

I think you mean /etc/mail/aliases, and no, training comments will be taken as emaill addresses, so you'll get addressing errors, typically "User unknown". Comments can be on their own line as well as blank lines. newaliases (or sendmail -bi) will not give an error for trailing comments.

[Fred Martin_1]

thanks Bill