PMDF User's Guide
OpenVMS Edition
Previous Next Contents Index

1.1 Sending Mail With VMS MAIL

You should continue to use VMS MAIL like you always have in the past. The only change in your usage will be how you specify addresses when sending mail to PMDF. When addressing a message to PMDF, enclose the address in double quotes,1 and prefix the (now quoted) address with IN% as shown below: 


IN%"address"
For example, 


$ MAIL
MAIL> SEND/CC
To:     in%"jdoe@example.com,in%"sbeebe@example.com"
Cc:     in%"misha@example.com"
Subj:   Full moon tonight!
Enter your message below. Press CTRL/Z when complete, or CTRL/C to quit: 
There's a full moon tonight.  Let's meet in the back alley and have a
howling good time.
 
              \Rex
[CTRL/Z]
MAIL>
After you have entered the addresses, continue as you normally would; i.e., supply a subject line, enter the message body, etc. After you end the message with a CTRL/Z, it will be sent; no other action on your part is required. As usual, if you enter a CTRL/C, the message send will be aborted.

Note
If you are using PMDF MAIL, then you should omit the IN% prefix and enclosing double quotes. They are not required.

Each address you specify with the IN% prefix must be in "RFC 822 format". This format, for those technically inclined, is specified in the document Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages (RFC 822), a copy of which can be found in the PMDF_ROOT:[DOC.RFC] directory.2 Here are some sample addresses, all in RFC 822 format: 


in%"jdoe@example.com" 
in%"John the engineer <jdoe@example.com>" 
in%"'JDoe@example.com' <jdoe@example.com>" 
in%"jdoe@example.com (john)"
These samples all specify the same address, jdoe@example.com.

Warning
Failure to properly terminate any quoting used in VMS MAIL addresses (i.e., omitting a closing double quote, " ) can cause problems. Some versions of VMS MAIL will go into an infinite loop if quoting is not properly terminated. More recent versions of VMS MAIL will signal a fatal error and abort if unbalanced quotes are used. This is strictly a problem with VMS MAIL and not with PMDF; PMDF is not involved in any way with this part of VMS MAIL error handling.

PMDF allows multiple, comma-separated RFC 822 addresses inside of a single IN% construct; for example, 


IN%"USER1@SYSTEM1.EXAMPLE.COM, USER2@SYSTEM2.ABC.EDU"
While this format saves a certain amount of repetitive typing, it does, however, inhibit somewhat the transformation logic PMDF uses when trying to correct syntactically illegal addresses. Furthermore, in the event of an error, the particular address causing the problem will not be identified, since, owing to limitations of VMS MAIL, error reporting is done on a per-IN% construct basis.

Note

1 Here, and throughout this manual, double quote refers to the character " and should not be confused with the single quote character, ', which is also used as the apostrophe character.

2 RFC 822, Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages, David H. Crocker, 1982

Previous Next Contents Index