Joan Korenman wrote:
 
[snip]
>         Oh yes, I guess that's right.  However, I would imagine that
> already having your name in a given server's file is less common than
> not having it there.  So I'm surprised that the instructions, esp. on
> the LSoft web site, don't address the more common situation and thus
> ask people to use SUBSCRIBE Listname Your Name.
>
>         But, at any rate, that does clear up the mystery.  Thanks to both
> Harold and Philo for the clarification.
 
Hi.
 
Only one problem -- it's all wrong.
 
I tried it on "my" list -- went to a place I have access to and
signed up to my own list, omitting the name fields in the request.
It signed me up as "Stan Ryckman".  Next, I unsubscribed myself,
and resubscribed, carefully changing my RFC822 header from:
        From: [log in to unmask] (Stan Ryckman)
to:
        From: [log in to unmask] (S Ryckman)
and again not supplying "firstname lastname" and, surely enough,
it signed me up as "S Ryckman".
 
So, if the firstname lastname are omitted, it looks to the comment
field (i.e., the stuff in ()) in the "From:" header of your subscribe
request.  This is what one would normally expect, I think; most mail
readers do that sort of thing when listing available mail.  I'd
imagine it does the same with other legal "From:" syntaxes, but
I'll let you test it if you want to  :-)
 
And to the person who claimed (or speculated) that the name is somehow
associated with a filename:  nope.  I'm currently signed up to my
own list three times as "Stan Ryckman" and during the above test,
a fourth time.  (Lest anyone ask:  #1 is my "regular" address -- this
one; #2 is set to NOMAIL and is the address produced if I mail from
my newsreader, which changes "sunspot.tiac.net" into "tiac.net" (both
come to here), and #3 is an account at a different ISP which I had
anyway and is a backup, and can be used to experiment with "things
users might do.")
 
Cheers,
Stan Ryckman ([log in to unmask])