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The MAIL Command

The MAIL command tells the mail server to start a new conversation. It's also used to let the mail server know where to send a mail message to report errors. The syntax looks like this:

MAIL FROM:<reverse-path>

If the mail server accepts the command, it will reply with a code of 250. Otherwise, the reply code will be greater than 400.

In the example shown previously

>MAIL From:<(dave@cs.cf.ac.uk)>

<250 <(dave@cs.cf.ac.uk)>... Sender ok

The reverse-path is different from the name given as the sender following the DATA command.

You can use this technique to give a mailing list or yourself an alias. For example, if you are maintaining a mailing list to your colleaguse, you might want the name that appears in the reader's mailer to be 'MyNickname' instead of your own name.



dave@cs.cf.ac.uk