As far as I am aware, Johnny is completely correct.

Internet Finger expects RFC822 formatted names. An example would be slogin@venti2.tommytimesharing.org, which triggers TCP/IP transport. Identifying the same user on the same machine on HECnet uses MAIL11 format, or VENTI2::SLOGIN. Application level routing works as Johnny describes.

So the parser works by waking up on a trailing "::" which is MAIL11 syntax to identify a node. MAIL11 format is preferred over RFC822, so it checks that the proceeding characters are valid syntax for a DECnet node (restricted SIXBIT, 6 characters maximum) and that the identified node is in the HECnet database. If it fails, you get a parse error. If you have no trailing "::" and bump into an "@" sign, then RFC822 parsing is used.

So the "::" is used as a field terminator, whereas the "@" functions as a field separator. Surrounding things with "::" probably won't work. I believe I allow complex forwarded remote specifications to be surrounded by double quotes, which is how I handle that funny Unix 'bang' (!) syntax.

Under Tops-20, finger is integrated into the mail system and is used to resolve personal names into user ids.

On 1/10/26 5:19 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:

I find it really weird to use that kind of syntax, and it probably will create a mess if you involve some other TCP/IP based finger server in such a line.

In my RSX implementation, you would write

FINGER SPC11D::@server.glaver.org

The RFC for finger on TCP/IP really states that hosts should be processed right to left, and the username is at the left end. So you can do

finger bqt@mim.softjar.se@foo.bar.host.net

Which would contact foo.bar.host.net from the local machine, and request bqt@mim.softjar.se as the username to that host, which would then go and contact mim.softjar.se, just requesting information for user "bqt".

If you pass it something with :: as a separation between hosts and/or usernames, a RFC compliant finger server will not do what you would hope for.

I will obviously not force anyone to rewrite any implementation, but be aware that a proper TCP/IP RFC compliant finger server is incompatible with this form host host name chains.

Johnny

On 2026-01-10 23:08, Terri Kennedy wrote:

Example: Getting fancy ("Escaping" from HECnet):

SPCVXB::$ f spc11d::server.glaver.org::