> Right! There is nothing wrong with the 'add' command. My comments apply only
> to the web interface, which allows the user to enter either
> 
>        address name
> or
>        name <address>

The ADD command also allows both forms. Actually, there are even more allowed formats. You can enter any valid RFC822 address field.

> The following logic model should "do the
> right thing" with any input string that includes a syntactically-valid
> email address, with or without <> delimiters, as either the first or last
> blank-delimited word.
> 
> 1. Does the input string contain one and only one instance of '@'?
> 
>    If no, issue an error message and stop processing.

It is perfectly acceptable to have multiple @ signs in an address line. Not only is the @ sign allowed in a person's name (frequently used for phone numbers or extensions), it is also allowed in the local part of an e-mail address. I am not saying that it is a good idea to create an account containing an @ sign, I am saying that any mail program that wants to claim compliance with Internet standards must support it. Actually, when I wrote the first version of LISTSERV in 1986, my upstream node had an @ sign in every account.

If one decides to ignore RFC822 compliance and have one's own rules, indeed life becomes much easier.

  Eric