Re: [Nmh-workers] Does anyone remember how blind aliases used to work?

[Neil W Rickert]

Joel Reicher <address@hidden> wrote on Apr 10, 2007:

>There is a sample line in the mh-alias man page which doesn't appear
>to be supported anymore:

>b-people: Blind List: bill, betty;

I just tested with 1.0.4, and it is working fine.  I'll test later
at home (newer version).

>Doing "ali -list b-people" gives

>Blind List: bill
>betty;

That's what I get with 1.0.4 (I used a different aliases entry, but
got the equivalent result).

>I don't understand what "whom" is attempting to do with the alias, and
>haven't looked very closely yet.

>Does anyone remember how this is supposed to work, if it ever did?
>The current man page for mh-alias is self-contradictory in this
>respect; the grammar gives no special status to a second ":" or
>line-terminating ";".

The man page assumes familiarity with RFC822 groups lists.
The format for these is

        comment : address [, address]* ;

If you mail to "b-people", using your example, the "To:" is supposed
to be expanded to:

        To: Blind List:bill, betty;

Then "send" (or is it "post") will generate a recipient list of
"bill" and "betty", and remove everything between ":" and ";" on the
"To:" line.

 -NWR