OPATH

Section: C Library Functions (3)
Updated: PE SDC
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NAME

opath - Generate a UUCP route from an RFC822 address
oupath - Generate a UUCP route from a (possibly disconnected) UUCP path

SYNOPSIS

char *opath(s)
char *s;

char *oupath(s)
char *s;

DESCRIPTION

These routines use the pathalias database to generate UUCP routing paths from your local site to specified remote sites on either the UUCP network or other connected networks.

opath takes one argument, an RFC822 address, as described in ADDRESS(1). From this, it generates and returns a UUCP path to the site named in the argument.

oupath takes one argument, a UUCP path. If the next site on this path is named x, oupath will prepend a path from your site to x, if x is nonadjacent to your site. If x is a domain, i.e. contains a dot (.), oupath will generate a path to a gateway for this domain. Note that oupath will not alter the argument path, other than to make the above transformations; it does not check whether sites in the argument are adjacent to one another, or whether they represent an optimal path; it is assumed that if the user has specified a path, then he wants to use that path.

The principal difference between opath and oupath is that the former gives precedence to ``@'', whereas the latter gives precedence to ``!''. The former is intended to be invoked when receiving mail from a user interface or a non-UUCP source (if the subsequent transport mechanism is to be UUCP), whereas the latter is intended solely to be used by UUCP internal software, principally rmail, in routing mail through the UUCP network.

FILES

/usr/lib/uucp/archive - The pathalias database, in DBM(3) format. See PATHALIAS(1) for information; pathalias is a public-domain program distributed via the Usenet's net.sources facility.

/usr/lib/uucp/domains - The domain/gateway table. Each line of this file consists of either a ``#'' followed by arbitrary comment text, or an entry of the form:
<domain>,<path>,<reserved>,<template>
Where <domain> is the string (in capital letters) identifying a particular <path> is a string which may be included at an arbitrary point in the generated route, <reserved> is currently unused, and <template> is a string indicating the format of the generated route.

The <template> is a printf-style string; it is not quoted, and begins at the character immediately following the comma which separates <template> from <reserved>. The <template> may consist of arbitrary ASCII characters, which are copied unchanged into the generated route; or of a percent (%) sign followed by one of the following characters:

P: The <path> string is inserted. The <path> may consist either of a string which is inserted unchanged; or of the character ``>'' followed by the name of a UUCP site, in which case the entire <path> string is replaced with a string representing the path to the named site. The last token on this string is the site named in the original <path> string, without a following ``!''.
U: The user name from the original address is inserted.
N: The site name from the original address, with the domain specifiers removed, is inserted.
D: The site name from the original address, including the domain specifiers, is inserted.
R: The UUCP path to the site named in the original address is looked up in the pathalias database and inserted. Note that this path is looked up only when the %R is seen while scanning the <template>, so an error message for an invalid site name is generated if and only if it appears in an address with a domain which contains a %R in its template.

When making entries in the domain table, domain names which are a suffix of another domain name in the table should be ordered such that the longer string(s) appear first. For example, .WA.UUCP should preceed .UUCP in the table. A linear search is made of the table, and the first domain found in the table which is a suffix of the domain in the designated address is used as the domain in generating the routing.

Following are some example entries for the domain table. Note that all domain names begin with a ``.''.

# This is a comment
.HP.UUCP,,,%R!%U
.UUCP,,,%R!%U
.CSNET,>decwrl,,%P!%U%%%S@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
.EDU,>ucbvax,,%P!%D

AUTHOR

Eric Roskos, Perkin-Elmer Corp. SDC.

NOTE

The <reserved> field in the domain table currently has a function which may be determined by examining the source code for opath. However, this function is a vestigal function provided for sites that used an earlier version of opath; future opath versions will use this field for a different purpose, and new users of opath therefore should not use this field.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 06:40:23 GMT, December 12, 2024