MAIL: Odd smail->exim problem

I know this is not debian specific but maybe someone here has experiance with this. I have a smail mailhost that sends mail using demand_inet_uusmtp transport to send mail to a second system using exim that is ultimately bound for a third system. My mail/force.path entry for the destination site lo

RE: MAIL: Odd smail->exim problem

> >bar.com!foo.com!%s will not work because smail generates a routing error >because the address must be in internet format for that transport. Yes this DOES work. I do not know why it did not work when I tried it earlier. I must have made a type someplace. All is working well if I put the inter