Re: [cobalt-developers] Limit for recipients.

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:07 PM 1/7/00  Ariel Manzur wrote:

> Hi.
>
> I'm writting this perl script that sends e-mails, and I'm opening sendmail
> using open(MAIL, "|/usr/bin/sendmail -t");
>
> Is there any limit for the "To:" "CC" and "Bcc" fields? (I remember the
> command line had a limit, but I'm using "sendmail -t").

The definitive sendmail documentation, "Sendmail", written by Brian 
Costales and Eric Allman (the same guy who wrote the sendmail program), 
published by O'Reilly, says nothing about a limitation.

In fact, the documentation for the -t switch implies no limitation, 
sendmail reads the "To:", "Cc:" and "Bcc:" addresses one by one and sends 
out the emails.  However, as I've read (somewhere) that sendmail can bunch 
mail going to the same server, we must presume a limitation based on 
available memory, until proven otherwise.

> Can I send a mail with like 1MB of "to:"?

Maybe.  That said, you must of course remember the limitation of the 
receiving MUA if you want your email delivered.  With "Bcc:" this is not 
important; the contents of the "Bcc:" field do not get delivered to the 
recipients inside the email.  However, the contents of the "To:" and the 
"Cc:" fields do get delivered with the mail.  So there are two 
questions:  Can your recipients' MUAs handle such long "To:" and "Cc:" fields?

Maybe.  That said, would your intended recipients scroll through a megabyte 
of headers to see what message you had at the bottom?  I know I wouldn't, 
but that's not nearly as important to you as whether or not your recipients 
would.  So the question remains, would they?

Maybe.

That said, do you really want to give each of your recipients your entire 
mailing list of email addresses?  They'd certainly be visible to 
everyone.  If only one of the people on the list is a spammer (and 
presuming your not, with so many addresses in your "To:" field), you'd have 
just given them a pretty good sized list.

So all in all, I'd have to say: NOT A GOOD IDEA. (capitals intentional)

Jeff

--
Jeff Lasman, nobaloney.net
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