On Thu, 3 Oct 1996 11:20:03 -0700 Eric Paul-Hus <[log in to unmask]> said: >Now, correct me if I'm wrong: In a far away time when I learned (only a >tiny bit) about JCL they told me that the "/" command type of line was >limited to an 80 bytes fixed length record. LISTSERV uses that kind of >command for remote mail operation. I maybe confusing thing The VM version of LISTSERV can support destination addresses of up to 64k characters minus the length of 'MAIL FROM:<>' or 'RCPT TO:<>' or whatever line the address appears in. In most cases your MTA will be limited to a much smaller length. The 80 byte limit for the address was chosen because this is the width of a traditional terminal. So, when editing the list file on VM you saw the list info in columns 1-80, and the options were hidden in columns 81-100. It was convenient. We could argue all day long about the "right" size for the address field, but it is a compromise of disk space and RAM usage vs number of users inconvenienced. Most addresses are 30 bytes or less and very few exceed 80 bytes. Maybe 90 or 100 bytes would be better, but then you'll find an address that requires 110 bytes, and if you had 110 bytes you'd find a 120 bytes one, and so forth. The question is how many addresses are affected? The DNS allows domains to have up to 255 characters :-) Eric