David W. Tamkin writes on 5 April 1997 at 15:21:58
[...]
Autoresponders should be triggered by limited criteria, not by default for
all mail except that which meets limited criteria.
Curious as to what your "limited criteria" are. I have an
auto-responder set up becasue I get a lot of mail every day and I
don't want people to think I'm ignoring them. I also try to take
steps to avoid sending out the auto-response in the first place. Is
the following somewhat similar to what you you might have in mind?
-----
#####
##### an automatic reply back to people I don't correspond with on a
##### regular basis...I get too much mail
##### - sent to me (ignore mailing lists/aliases)
##### - skip program mailers and low priority mail
##### - prevent loops
##### - In-Reply-To/References: in case someone replies to
##### something I posted to a mailing list (add Newsgroups:?)
##### - Be nice and look for a "reply" Subject: too (but NOT a FWD:
##### subject - people need to learn to "reply" and not "forward"
##### responses)
##### - when I'm not on vacation, send a different message
##### ( - skip local addresses: * $!^From:(_dot_)*(_at_)(_dot_)*${DOMAIN} )
##### - already in .friends/cache?
##### - skip mailing lists I maintain
#####
# put these in /tmp so they get deleted periodically
#FROM_CACHE="${PRIVTMPDIR}/${LOGNAME}_procmail_fromcache_`date '+%d'`"
FROM_CACHE="${PRIVTMPDIR}/${LOGNAME}_procmail_fromcache_`date '+%y%m%d'`"
:0Whci:fromcache.lock
* $^TO${ME_REGEXP}
* !^FROM_DAEMON
* $!^X-Loop: ${UNIQUE_NAME}
* !^(In-Reply-To|References|Subject: ?Re(\[[0-9]+\]])?):
* $!${VACA_SUBJECT}
* $!?${ON_VACATION}
* !? grep -i "$SENDER" .friends
| (touch $FROM_CACHE; chmod 600 $FROM_CACHE)
:0Ac
* !? grep -i "$SENDER" $FROM_CACHE
{
# don't delete on_vacation file
TRAP="$ORIGTRAP"
:0Whci:fromcache.lock
| echo "$SENDER" >> $FROM_CACHE
:0fi
| formail -rt -I "Precedence: junk" -A "X-Loop: ${UNIQUE_NAME}" \
-I "Subject: automatic acknowledgement of mail for ${ME}"
:0bfi
| (echo "Hi!" ;\
echo "" ;\
echo "This is just to let you know that your message" ;\
echo "of ${DATE_LINE} to ${TO_LINE}" ;\
echo "about ${SUBJECT}" ;\
echo "arrived in my mailbox on ${DATE}." ;\
[...]
echo "Thanks," ;\
echo " Dan" ;\
cat ${HOME}/.signature )
:0
! -oi -t
}
-----
Dan
------------------- message is author's opinion only ------------------
J. Daniel Smith <DanS(_at_)bristol(_dot_)com>
http://www.bristol.com/~DanS
Bristol Technology B.V. +31 33 450 50 50, ...51 (FAX)
Amersfoort, The Netherlands {info,jobs}(_at_)bristol(_dot_)com