procmail
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Re: Outbound mailing lists

1996-07-04 15:57:04
David W. Tamkin wrote,

[snip]

| eg;
| 
| :0
| * ^TO.*AllArchitects

Stop right there.  The proper form is

  * ^TOAllArchitects

or in more recent versions, ^TO_ might be better for your purpose than ^TO:

  * ^TO_AllArchitects

I've been meaning to ask, and this seems a convenient time...

Just *why* have these macros been defined without requiring some
sort of separator from what they follow?  This bizarre syntax
makes the syntax highly confusing, perhaps even ambiguous.  What if
you want something starting with "TOA"? or what if you want something
that was sent to _AllArchitects but have "TO" and not "TO_"?

Ugh.  I suggest requiring something like:
  * ^{TO_}AllArchitects
or even:
  * ^TO_\AllArchitects
but the magic of "TODAY" matching any "To: DAY" is bizzare IMHO.

And 'TO.*DAY' makes perfect sense to me.

Or if you prefer, create a variable $TO, used in the string as "${TO}"
if adjacent to something that looks like more of a token.  Just pleases
do *something* that makes syntactic sense.  Knowing that a string
"ABCDEFGHI" has an implicit token terminator after the "D" is
syntactically bizarre (for example).

Otherwise, how is anyone to know just *what* characters up front
might trigger a macro?  Yes, I can remember TO and TO_ ... but when
the next procmail comes out with more such "invisible" macros,
weird things will happen.

OK, I'm done griping.  But authors, please take note.

^TO and ^TO_ already end in an expression that is better than ".*"; adding
".*" after them seriously weakens their function.

How does this weaken them (other than by slowing them down, perhaps,
and usually who cares about that?)?

Cheers,
Stan (stanr(_at_)tiac(_dot_)net)

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