But this did...
Alumhbis03
hindy
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Barrett [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 12:15 PM
To: Chinn, Hindy
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Length limit of list names
On Thursday, August 7, 2003, at 04:33 pm, Chinn, Hindy wrote:
What are the do's and don'ts of list names? Limit number of
characters? Can there be spaces, dashes, underscores in name?
I am not aware of any explicit length limits but I wouldn't write an
essay in a list. Long list names can be inconvenient for users to type
when posting etc
Mail list names have to function as valid mail aliases, as a directory
name and as part of file names in the server's file system so you have
several constraints to consider.
To complicate life, there is a set of mail aliases associated with any
given list; for instance for the list called 'testlist' the menagerie
is.
testlist
testlist-admin
testlist-bounces
testlist-confirm
testlist-join
testlist-leave
testlist-owner
testlist-request
testlist-subscribe
testlist-unsubscribe
owner-testlist
You want to avoid like the plague having a list whose base list name
ends/begins with any of the suffices/prefixes. This will cause
problems
for instance if one list's -admin alias is another list's base name!
Although mail aliases are notionally case sensitive, that way lies
insanity, and few MTAs will distinguish mail aliases that are
differentiated by case alone. Mailman treats all list names as case
insensitive and the directory/file names associated with a list in the
file system and in MM's web GUI interface URI's exclusively use the
lower-case version version of the list name.
Various characters other than a-zA-Z0-9 are entirely legal in mail
aliases but will cause grief when used in file names. In some case
they
may also break code that decomposes mail aliases in a simple-minded,
maybe even incompetent, way. There is little point in exploring the
outer-reaches of such code's capability unless you are a masochist.
I would suggest you stick to a-zA-Z0-9 and hyphen as characters in
list
names.
Thanx
hindy
----------------------------------------
H I N D Y C H I N N
Asst. Director of Information Technology
Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life
phone: 202-449-6542 fax: 202-449-6442
----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
Richard Barrett
http://www.openinfo.co.uk
