1 05/31/83 Mailing lists
2
3 A mailing list is an ASCII segment or archive component which contains
4 one or more addresses. When mail is sent to a mailing list, it is
5 delivered to each of the addresses in the list. The members of a
6 mailing list may themselves be other mailing lists. Although a mailing
7 list is composed of multiple addresses, all mail system operations
8 treat it as a single address.
9
10
11 Format of a mailing list:
12 A segment or archive component must have the suffix "mls" in order to
13 be used as a mailing list.
14
15 The mailing list segment or archive component contains the printed
16 representations of its member addresses. For a description of the
17 acceptable printed representations of an address, type:
18 help addresses.gi -section printed representations
19
20 If multiple addresses are given on a single line in the mailing list,
21 they must be separated by commas; however, the comma at the end of a
22 line is optional. The last line of the mailing list must not end with
23 a comma.
24
25
26 Example:
27 The following is a valid mailing list:
28
29 Palter.Multics, Sibert.Multics,
30 save >udd>SiteSA>PKelley>PKelley.mlsys>outgoing,
31 Mail-Enthusiasts at MIT-MC
32
33
34 Command/request line format:
35 The following control argument is used on a command/request line to
36 specify a mailing list address:
37
38 -mailing_list path,
39 -mls path
40 specifies the pathname of a mailing list. The suffix "mls" is added
41 if necessary. The archive component pathname convention is accepted.
42
43
44 Message header format:
45 The following text is used in message headers to represent a mailing
46 list address:
47
48 list path
49 identifies a mailing list by pathname. Path is the absolute
50 pathname of the mailing list segment or archive component excluding
51 the suffix "mls".