Controlling 'From' in mail headers? Help!

[Richard Maine]

On 22 Apr 91 18:51:41 GMT, peter at java.sophia.com (Peter Espen) said:

Peter> When this message goes out from the internet connected machine, the
Peter> 'From' line in the header looks like this:

Peter>         netmachine!uucpmachine!peter

Peter> I want it to look like this:

Peter>         uucpmachine!peter at domain.com

Peter> so that people who get my message down the line will be able to
Peter> reply to  'uucpmachine!peter at domain.com'  instead of a long list
Peter> of uucp connections that they have to follow to get back to me.

Sorry I am not fluent enough in sendmail.cf hacking to directly
answer your question, but I do have one suggestion for when you do
figure out how to hack sendmail.cf to your purpose.  I suggest you
try to make the from line show something more like

     peter%uucpmachine at domain.com

instead of

     uucpmachine!peter at domain.com

The form you suggested, with mixed uucp-style and domain-style addressing
is not standard and does not work with some mailers.  Even those mailers that
accept the format are not 100% consistent in how they interpret it.
Some interpret it as you intend (send the mail to domain.com and from
there to uucpmachine!peter).  Others interpret it to mean send the mail
to uucpmachine and from there to peter at domain.com (which won't work).
There is no standard to say which of these interpretations is correct.

The form I suggested is much more universally accepted.  (I won't claim
its entirely universal, but it seems like the most widely workable one).
There is also an RFC822 routine syntax that starts out like
"@domain.com:" (or that ":" might be a ";" - I forget), but I've had
mixed luck with using this syntax to bridge between domain-style and
uucp-style addressing.

I perhaps should have e-mailed this reply, but the issue comes up enough
that it seemed worth posting.

--
--
Richard Maine
maine at altair.dfrf.nasa.gov