bang path


bang path

(communications)An old-style UUCP electronic-mail address naming a sequence of hosts through which a messagemust pass to get from some assumed-reachable location to theaddressee (a "source route"). So called because each hopis signified by a bang sign (exclamation mark). Thus, forexample, the path

...!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me

directs people to route their mail to computer bigsite(presumably a well-known location accessible to everybody) andfrom there through the computer foovax to the account of userme on barbox.

Before autorouting mailers became commonplace, people oftenpublished compound bang addresses using the { } convention(see glob) to give paths from *several* big computers, inthe hope that one's correspondent might be able to get mail toone of them reliably. e.g.

...!seismo, ut-sally, ihnp4!rice!beta!gamma!me

Bang paths of 8 to 10 hops were not uncommon in 1981.Late-night dial-up UUCP links would cause week-longtransmission times. Bang paths were often selected by bothtransmission time and reliability, as messages would often getlost.

bang path

(operating system)A shebang.

bang path

An address for sending email via UUCP that specifies the entire route to the destination computer. It separates each hostname with an exclamation point, which is known as a bang. For example, the bang path midearth!shire!bilbo!jsmith would go to the JSMITH user account on the BILBO host, which is reached by first going to MIDEARTH and then SHIRE. See UUCP.