I guess I wasn't as clear as I should have been - I wasn't trying to give a complete list of extensions, just examples. But every valid email address should have the components I mentioned.

Barbara

>Timothy -
>Remember that if you go this route, there are plenty of address extensions beyond com, net, gov, edu - every nation in the world has a valid extension (I think the term of art is "top-level domain"). For instance, the USA has a .us extension, though it's not frequently used. I believe the complete list can be found on the ANSI website.
>
>However, I don't have an answer for the larger question (how to validate an e-mail address). Even if you had access to a finger command, I don't know that finger returns a hit for every valid e-mail address.
>
>Of course, you could always spam them ... but that doesn't seem conducive to positive customer relations :)
>zahid