sendmail, 4th Edition

Parse an Address with /parse

The /parse rule-testing command instructs sendmail to pass an address through a predetermined sequence of rules to select a delivery agent and to put the $u macro ($u on page 848) into its final form. The /parse command is used like this:

/parse address

If the address is missing, sendmail prints the following usage message:

Usage: /parse address

The following example shows a local address being fed into /parse. Note that the numbers on the left are for later reference and are not part of sendmail’s output:

   > /parse you@localhost (Your Name)
❶   Cracked address = $g (Your Name)
❷   Parsing envelope-recipient address
   canonify           input: you @ localhost
❸   Canonify2          input: you < @ localhost  >
❹   Canonify2        returns: you < @ here . our. domain .  >
   canonify         returns: you < @ here . our. domain .  >
❺   parse              input: you < @ here . our. domain .  >
   Parse0             input: you < @ here . our. domain .  >
   Parse0           returns: you < @ here . our. domain .  >
   ParseLocal         input: you < @ here . our. domain .  >
   ParseLocal       returns: you < @ here . our. domain .  >
   Parse1             input: you < @ here . our. domain .  >
   Parse1           returns: $# local $: you
❻   parse            returns: $# local $: you
❼   2                  input: you
   2                returns: you
❽   EnvToL             input: you
❾   EnvToL           returns: you
   final              input: you
   final            returns: you
❿   mailer local, user you

The address you@localhost is first fed into crackaddr (line ❶) to separate it from any surrounding RFC822 comments such as "(Your Name).” If mail were actually to be sent, the address would be stored in the ...