Re: Recipes based on date and time

    > On Tuesday 29 October 96, at 14 h 0, the keyboard of 
gilles(_at_)mc2(_dot_)fr 
    > (Gilles GOULLET) wrote:
    > 
    > >         I just want to make some of my recipes being taken in account 
only
    > > during certain periods, typically at business hours.
    > 
    > date(1) offers a lot of options to retrieve date and time.
    > 
    > >         So the recipe "put personal mail in the appropriate folder" 
would
    > > have to become "put personal mail in appropriate folder if business 
hours". 
    > 
    > Beware with the following recipes: date and test are likely to have 
    > different options according to the Unix you use (I use only GNU tools so 
    > I'm safe and portable).
    > 
    > DAY=`date +'%a'`
    > HOUR=`date +'%k'`
    > 
    > # Put personal mail in /tmp/personal if business hours
    > :0
    > * TO.*some_address
    > * ? test ( $HOUR -le 17 ) -a ( $HOUR -ge 9 ) \
    >    -a ( $DAY != "Sat" ) -a ( $DAY != "Sun" )
    > /tmp/personal

1. That "test" command above will fail unless the parens are quoted.

2. I use the "standard" SysV date, which is already installed on most
   systems.  I would use GNU date, but its arguments are arbitrarily
   different, for no good reason.  It would be great if GNU date has
   compatible arguments -- that way, may scripts would continue working
   with it.  But it doesn't -- so sad.

If you expect to have several recipes depending upon this test, set a
variable for later usage.  

    DAY=`date +%w`      # day of week, Sun=0
    HOUR=`date +%H`     # hours of the date, 00-23
    MINS=`date +%M`     # minute of the hour, 00-59
    :0                  # round up the hour
    * ? test $MINS -gt 0
    { HOUR=`expr $HOUR + 1` }
    # performing a modulo 24 is not necessary here, since for our
    # purposes 24 == 0 in the test below.
    :0                  # business ours are 8-5am M-F
    * ? test \( $HOUR -ge 8 \) -a \( $HOUR -le 17 \)
    { BUSINESS_HOURS=1 }

Then, at various places in your .procmailrc or any included recipe
files, you can reference "BUSINESS_HOURS" like this:

    :0
    * BUSINESS_HOURS ?? .
    * ^TO_(some_address)
    /tmp/personal

Another example: if you are not at work, you might not want to have
"root" mail clogging up your inbox:

    :0                  # if not at work, and it is sysadmin stuff
    * ^TO_(root|mailer-daemon|postmaster)
    * !BUSINESS_HOURS ?? .
    /tmp/rootmail