In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Ravi Teja <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> Why don't you use an existing mail server? > >Probably because that was his homework assignment for a networking >class. Not uncommon to be told to implement a server from the scratch >from the RFC. Although that does not explain his concern about >performance. > >Abhinav, if that is the case, using sockets is more or less the same >from any language. Python as usual will be cleaner than C. You might >want to look at Twisted Mail. Use SocketServer module in the standard >library to implement the RFC. Other than that it is silly to try to >write a Mail Server unless you have some extra ordinary need.
Any lecturer assigning "write a mail server" as a class project is doing his/her students a true dis-service. Mail server RFC compliance is a nightmare to get right, performance issues and mail routeing are both material for at least a full year's university study. A student who tries to make an even vaguely RFC compliant mail server probably won't finish their project, as student who completes such a project might come away with the mistaken belief that they actually have done it correctly. The number of software products which use eail and do so incorrectly is astounding and depressing. There's a reason that the source for sendmail is about 120K lines, exim is nearly 270K lines. Doing it right is _hard_. -- Jim Segrave ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list