Re: facts about the real world, part 2

begin  quotation by D. J. Bernstein on 2003/2/13 18:22 +0000:
> Roy Badami writes:
>> Delimiter is to my knowledge typically either '+' or '-', though it's
>> possible that there are others in use
>
> The Andrew mail system---still in use, and historically the first system
> to provide convenient subaddressing to users---has = as its standard
> separator; the same separator has some uses in ezmlm.

AMS at Carnegie Mellon University (where it was created) used '+'.  Perhaps 
the AMS deployment you saw changed it from the default '+' to '='.

But there are some other systems using "=" as a subaddress delimiter.

                - Chris