On Thu, 9 Jan 1997 18:38:33 EST Roger Fajman <[log in to unmask]> said:
>Yes, I extracted the list from the RFC and posted it back then. However,
>it seems to me that LISTSERV should be able to look up the status code
>in a table and display a reasonable explanation.
But there are a zillion of these codes, and more will be added regularly.
And the same code can mean different things in different contexts. The
mailer reporting the error is supposed to provide an error message that
can be echoed back to a human reader and that is more meaningful than
"5.4.4 Unable to route" or "5.4.5 Network congestion" (no kidding?) A
mailer that just says "5.4.4" with no further information is not very
different from a mailer that says "unknown imail error 21". In both cases
you can look up the error code in a semi-standard list of meanings and in
both cases I would delete the subscriber on the grounds of having a mail
system that sends messages that I don't understand.
Eric