Yes, this was because some very old (current at the time, however) implementations of gethostbyname(3) were implemented in such a way that if the first character they saw returned isdigit()==TRUE, then, they would assume that they had been passed an IP address and would attempt to encode the string as an IP address rather than looking it up in /etc/hosts or DNS. Owen On Oct 7, 2011, at 7:41 PM, Joe Hamelin wrote:
On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote: ----- Original Message -----
"3com.com"
I recall that 3M was originally mmm.com because they wouldn't allow a number to start a domain.
/me runs whois mmm.com
Yep, Created on..............: 1988-10-31.
but wait, 3m.com Created on..............: 1988-05-27.
So was the digit as first octet a limitation with some OS or software (BIND, sendmail, gopher?) or do I have brain-fade?
-- Joe Hamelin, W7COM, Tulalip, WA, 360-474-7474