At 01:11 AM 8/6/1997 -0400, Stan Ryckman wrote:
>At 06:00 PM 8/5/97 -0700, Anita Cohen-Williams wrote:
>>I know that Web addresses are case sensitive. Are some e-mail addresses case
>>sensitive as well?
>
>Maybe you won't believe this, but stuff to the RIGHT of the "@" is
>required to be case-insensitive, but stuff to the LEFT of the "@"
>is up to the site as to what it means.

True. Even when companies write them as [log in to unmask], it still
isn't.  He just does that to make it clearer to folks he's marketing to.

>Just to complicate matters, though, "PoStMaStEr@..." is supposed
>to work in all mixes of case.

Yes.

>Listserv doesn't apparently retain the distinction, so if you
>have two distinct users [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask], they'll
>have some trouble keeping themselves straight... something

But it does, and it doesn't.  You can have one guy on list as [log in to unmask],
and another as [log in to unmask], and if you delete one of them it'll delete
both.  But you can add them separately.  Same is true on deletions if you
  del Joe@*    (and these are the only two joe user names on list, they'll
both be gone.

>I discovered when trying to get multiple subscriptions to addresses
>such as "sTanr@..." and "stANr@..." -- since they all map to *ME*
>at my particular ISP, I thought I could use that trick to get
>myself a regular subscription, plus an index subscription and
>a digest subscription but nope, didn't work right.

Hmmmm....that isn't how Eric has explained it in the past, I don't believe.
 VM does retain case in LISTSERV for the username part of the address (left
of @ sign).   In fact, VM will always retain case, I believe, although it
doesn't seem to be used frequently in VM software.  In XEDIT, for example,
if you type in in mixed case, it'll be converted to all upper UNLESS you
"set case mixed" before typing that line.  Same is true in other VM
software.  Well, MailBook sets itself to mixed case, for example.

>Probably well over 99% of the email world is case-insensitive to
>the left of the "@" as well, so if you need to guess, then that
>would be the best assumption.

I always teach people to assume it IS case sensitive on user name.  If
nothing else, it'll make the recipient happier, and it just MIGHT be what
is needed to get it there.

>Oh, and the case sensitivity you may perceive on the web is
>probably due to file names on a UNIX system.  Files on other
>types of systems (such as Windows NT) may not be case sensitive.

Unix and other systems ARE case sensitive in file and directory names.
Again, I teach people that the FQDN is NOT case sensitive (as in email, of
course), but that anything after "the first single slash" IS case
sensitive.  And, it usually is.  One of my pet peeves is those who name web
directories stuff like MyBigFilesofXXXratedSTUFF.   Especially if I can't
cut and paste the address in from some other application.

Same is true of passwords on many systems, though there's usually an option
that can be set to ignore case on them.

Stan, I too don't know of RFCs on this, but I'll bet they're out there.
I've just not gone looking for them, since I only quote chapter and verse
when I need to (as when tellling my ISP that yes, 84.com WAS a legal domain
name, and the fact that Internic blessed it ought to prove it....but the
techie there was quoting some RFC from 88 or so that had been updated twice
since.  He just hadn't kept up.  And he DID have to change some stuff on
his system, as apparently any mail anyone had sent to 3com.com or 801.com
had never been delivered, as he'd had it canned.  o-(    )

cheers

dan

Dan Lester
[log in to unmask]
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.  Erasmus, 1534