Slash & Dot Separators
This aspect of the mapping between EMS destination names and SmartSockets subjects is straightforward, one-to-one, and bidirectional.
EMS destination names consist of tokens separated by the dot (.) character. SmartSockets subjects consists of tokens preceded by the slash (/) character (like UNIX directory pathnames).
For example, the EMS name foo.bar.baz corresponds to the SmartSockets name /foo/bar/baz. (Remember that SmartSockets names must begin with a leading slash, but EMS names need not begin with a leading dot. A leading dot indicates an empty element preceding it.)
The slash and dot characters have complementary roles in EMS and SmartSockets. In EMS slash is an ordinary character, while dot is a separator. In SmartSockets slash is a separator, while dot is an ordinary character. To translate names between EMS and SmartSockets, substitute these characters one for another. For example, the EMS name foo/bar.baz corresponds to the SmartSockets name /foo.bar/baz. However, to avoid confusion, we discourage using either slash or dot as ordinary characters.