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This page displays the COHERENT manpage for aliases [File of users' aliases].
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aliases -- System Administration File of users' aliases /usr/lib/mail/aliases File /usr/lib/mail/aliases holds aliases for users' addresses -- either on your system, or on other systems. The command smail reads this file when it figures out how to deliver a mail message. An alias is a ``nickname'' for a user. Once you have established an alias for a user, you can use that alias to send mail to her; this spares you the trouble of typing that person's convoluted e-mail address. An alias can also name an entire group of users; when you use the alias to send a mail message, every person in the group receives a copy. The format of each alias is alias_name: target where alias_name gives the alias to which you mail your message, and target is name to which where smail actually directs the message. target can be a login identifier on your local system; a mail address of a user on another system; or a cluster of users either on your system or on remote systems. For example, consider the user whose e-mail address is ivan@lepanto.mwc.com. If you add the entry ivan: ivan@lepanto.mwc.com to file /usr/lib/mail/aliases, then whenever you send mail to ivan, the routing program smail will automatically ``expand'' the address from ivan to ivan@lepanto.mwc.com, and dispatch the message properly. This spares you needless work, and eliminates the errors that would occur if you typed long addresses by hand. Please note that smail ignores differences in case when it compares a name with an alias. If a line begins with a white-space character, smail assumes that that line is a continuation of the previous line. smail ignores strings within parentheses, as well as any text that appears after the pound sign `#'. Thus, you can use `#' to embed a comment within aliases. Examples The following gives an example form of aliases: # this whole line is a comment # "mail programmers" sends mail to local users joe, jack, and bill programmers: joe jack bill # same as above programmers: joe jack bill # same as above programmers joe jack bill # same as above programmers joe # Joe Smith jack # Jack Thomas bill # Bill Williams # and yet another way; note use of parentheses to comment text programmers joe (Joe Smith) jack (Jack Thomas) bill (Bill Williams) # send a message to someone on another system. # this uses ``bang-path'' addressing joe: boston!widget!js # send a message to users on both your and another system programmers: boston!widget!js # Joe Smith chicago!gadget!jt # Jack Thomas bill # Bill Williams # all members of "programmers" group work at site "widget" programmers!widget joe jack bill To tell smail to use the contents of another file to expand an alias, use the following form: fredlist :include:/usr/lib/mail/fredlist smail adds each entry in /usr/lib/mail/fredlist to the alias for fredlist. You can also tell smail to read another alias file, and include its contents in the list of aliases to be expanded. For example, the following instruction :include:/usr/lib/mail/morealiases when embedded within /usr/lib/mail/aliases, tells smail to add the contents of /usr/lib/mail/morealiases to those of /usr/lib/mail/aliases as a regular alias file. All aliases are recursive, so you must be careful when you define them. For example, the entries bill: joe joe: bill causes an infinite loop. smail attempts to detect infinite loops, and to guess what you intended to do. The following example illustrates how you can use an alias to deliver mail to a remote user as well as to a local user who has the same name as the alias being expanded. smail expands the alias mylogin: mypc!mylogin mylogin to mypc!mylogin mylogin even though the second occurrence of mylogin matches the alias name. Both forms of file inclusion are recursive, too, and may lead to infinite loops if handled carelessly. See Also Administering COHERENT, mail [overview], smail Notes Beginning with release 4.2.14 of COHERENT, smail's aliases are kept in the form of a DBM data base. This is a simple data base that uses a hash table to speed the retrieval of information. If you change your file of aliases, you must invoke either the command newaliases or the command smail -bi to rebuild the binary data base of aliases. For details on what a DBM data base is, see the Lexicon entry for libgdbm. For details on how to use newaliases or smail, see their respective entries in the Lexicon.