counting and limiting emails

Hi

I am trying to figure out how I could do the following when I received
email:

1)  get the name of the sender
2)  check how many times the sender sent me email before, by checking in a
     in a file.  The format is

                          address1
                    address2
              address3
                                                        address2
                    address1
              [etc]

3) if the number of times the name is in the file is lower that a MAXIMUM,
process
     the mail, if not bounce the mail back.

What I have so far is 

to get the sender address

FROM="'$FORMAIL -rx To:'"

which get FROM=address, and this work

then to check I would assume that

COUNT="egrep -c "$FROM" $LIST"

would set COUNT to the number of times that FROM was found in the file LIST,
ex COUNT=3.  This does not work.

I think the next step would be to compare COUNT to MAXIMUM, but then I would
need
ideas how to do this.

If there are suggestions,, I would reaaly appreciated, and I thank in
advance replys.

Danielle

ah773(_at_)yfn(_dot_)ysu(_dot_)edu