>>>From: Judith Hopkins <[log in to unmask]>
>>>I am looking at my names printout and there are a number with
>>>the "  " that do not contain any special characters that I can see
 
There are, in my experience, two ways of subscribing. The first is to
follow the instructions and send the msg "sub list firstname lastname",
the second is to just send the msg "sub list".
 
If you DON'T supply a name with the sub command, listserv will look in
the mail header. (This is not documented to my knowledge, but I tried
it from my Juno account and that's what happened.) That's where the
quotes and parens and brackets come from - the subscriber's mail header
can contain all sorts of stuff!
 
If you DO supply a name with the sub command, it is NOT checked to make
sure it's a first and last name. Try it. Send a sub command to a list
you are already subscribed to, with about 4 random words after the
listname - all of those words will show up when you GET the list. I have
been known to use this to pass editorial comments to the list owner.
Here are two entries from a real list I own:
> [log in to unmask] Steven R. Eckert                                              1AAMGBCx91//
> [log in to unmask] S R E                                                           1AAMGJCx9h//
Note that special characters (the '.') do not cause escaping or quoting,
and that you are not limited to two words for the name. Even if the list
owner requires a proper first and last name during the subscription
process (sub by owner), the subscriber can send a new sub command after
the process is completed, and alter their entry. One clever subscriber
did this on my list:
> [log in to unmask] YourFirstNameHere YourLastNameHere                          1AAMGBCx9k//
I've replaced the name with "???????" for privacy, but GET really does
return "YourFirstNameHere YourLastNameHere" instead of a real name.
 
This behavior might be different on different hardware platforms. I think
this list is on a Pentium running Windoze NT.
 
SRE
 
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