RFC 278 (rfc278) - Page 1 of 4

Revision of the Mail Box Protocol

Alternative Format: Original Text Document
NWG/RFC# 278                            RWW 17-NOV-71 14:12  8056
Revision of the Mail Box Protocol

NETWORK WORKING GROUP             Abhay Bhushan, MIT-DMCG
Request for Comments #278         Bob Braden, UCLA-CCN
NIC 8056                          Eric Harslem, RAND
Categories: A.5, O.7              John Heafner, RAND
Obsoletes RFC 221, NIC 7612       Alex McKenzie, BBN-NET
                                  John Melvin, SRI-ARC
                                  Bob Sundberg, HARV
                                  Dick Watson, SRI-ARC
                                  Jim White, UCSB
                                  17-Nov-1971

                   REVISION OF THE MAIL BOX PROTOCOL

   The file transfer committee met and discussed the Mail Box Protocol
   RFC 221, NIC 7612.  The potential utility for the mechanism was
   confirmed and a couple of changes suggested.  We first give the
   changes and then restate the Protocol.

                                  CHANGES

   1) The Mail Box Protocol is only to allow ASCII stings of text
   formatted for a network standard line printer rather than allowing
   other data types.

   2) A new command is to be added to the File Transfer Protocol called
   "Append With Create" which appends to a file if the file exists, and
   creates a file if it does not exist.

   3) The standard path name for the mailbox is to be, using conventional
   metalanguage symbols,

      "MAIL"  ("PRINTER"/)

       is the ASCII GS, octal 035.  The semantics of
      the above are the following:

       is a NIC IDENT

      "MAIL"  "PRINTER" would be interpreted by the
      receiving site as meaning Append With Create the
      transmitted file to a bulk mail file to be printed or
      directly output it to a printer.

      "MAIL"   would be interpreted to mean
      either
Next >