From: "Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 93 09:12:57 PDT
To: hfinney@shell.portal.com (Hal Finney)
Subject: Re: Mail delivery question
In-Reply-To: <9310211532.AA05517@jobe.shell.portal.com.shell.portal.com>
Message-ID: <9310211607.AA22056@snark.lehman.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Hal Finney says:
> Now, my question is, when this mail is delivered to the Unix system which
> I use, how does the local software know to deliver it to hfinney?  My name
> does not seem to appear in the header at all.  In particular, the "To:"
> address is not hfinney@shell.portal.com, as I would have expected, but rather
> cypherpunks@toad.com.

All mail has two sets of "To" addresses. There is the ENVELOPE
address, which you do not see, and the HEADER address, which is mere
window dressing. I could have the headers say "To: That Lousy Schmuck"
and the mail would still arrive. The envelope and header addresses
have to be kept seperated for all sorts of very sound reasons that I
could explain happily in private mail. The envelope address is passed
around using the "RCPT" command in SMTP and is never contained in the
mail message itself.

Perry