Thanks for the tip.  I found a looping "I-er" here too that had been
going a couple days.  How do we get the fix?
 
   I don't think the vacation program should be let off the hook here
completely.  I realize it is difficult to do anything to combat the
small thinking out there but when a person runs a vacation program
they are running a mail server.  They too should be responsible for
what that server does.
 
   Other than trying to stop people from going on vacation (or running
the programs) I try to suggest a few things for improvements.  Some of
them that come to mind are
 
   1.  Answer the same address only once.  I thought this was a major
       design point for vacation programs but I suspect people learned
       perl and forgot how to program.  ;-)  This would help cut down
       on annoying personal mail or mail to list owners as well as loops.
       It just seems the right thing to do.  Sure they have to keep track
       of the addresses but that is much less data than the redundant
       messages being sent out.
 
   2.  Don't answer well known server addresses such as  LISTSERV, LISTPROC,
       MAJORDOMO, OWNER-*, *-REQUEST, MAILER-DAEMON, etc. and be sure
       to check the MAIL FROM / Return-Path for these.
 
   3.  Maybe the body of the mail should be "quoted" in some way to
       lessen the chance of misinterpretation.  Eg:
 
       # I'm away right now but while I'm gone you can contact
       # Pat Plunket in shipping.
 
       (I just know if we used an asterisk unix would try to execute
       every command it knows or something... ;-).
 
    Marty