Re: counting and limiting emails

Alan Stebbens asked,

| Stephen, it would sure be nice if we could use "m4" or some kind of
| macro facility.  Imagine defining a "GET_SENDER" recipe (using m4 syntax):
|
|     changequote([[, ]])
|     changecom(##)
|     ## define GET_SENDER(VAR) to set VAR to the best address of the SENDER
|     define(GET_SENDER, [[
|           :0
|           * ! ^Reply-To: *\/[^ ].*
|           * ! ^From: *\/[^ ].*
|           * ! ^Sender: *\/[^ ].*
|           * ! ^Return-Path: *\/[^ ].*
|           * ! ^From +\/[^ ].*
|           { $1 }  # unset it and don't bother responding
|           :0E
|           { $1="$MATCH" }
|       ]])
|
| Then, to use it is fairly simple:
|
|     GET_SENDER(SENDER)
|
| Alan

If you don't mind using up an inode and hard-coding the name of the variable,
it can be done now:

   INCLUDERC=/path/to/.returnaddressrc

   :0
   * RETURN_ADDRESS ?? .
   {
    reply routine
   }

where .returnaddressrc contains this:

            :0
            * ! ^Reply-To: *\/[^ ].*
            * ! ^From: *\/[^ ].*
            * ! ^Sender: *\/[^ ].*
            * ! ^Return-Path: *\/[^ ].*
            * ! ^From +\/[^ ].*
            { RETURN_ADDRESS }  # unset it and don't bother responding
            :0E
            { RETURN_ADDRESS=$MATCH }

If you do mind hard-coding the name of the variable, then

   INCLUDERC=/path/to/.returnaddressrc
   PERPETRATOR=$RETURN_ADDRESS # or whatever variable you want

   :0
   * PERPETRATOR ?? .
   {
    reply routine
   }

You can also add other header lines to consider and change the precedences
by just changing the text needing to recompile through m4 or anything else.