Re: Paul Barlett's question on running a mail list where
you're not supposed to.
I have some small mail lists that run this way (I can
give you the procmail and perl code if you like, but
it's pretty elementary):
Let's say that one list discusses banjos. The members know
that they have to start their subject lines like this:
Subject: banjo:: Whatever the real subject is.
Procmail sees the double colon and extracts the sender address
and the list name (banjo), which it sends to a perl script.
The perl script uses fgrep to check that the sender is really
on the list; if not it sends a canned reply. Otherwise, it
takes the addresses in the file and sends a copy of the email
to each one. It changes the sender name to "Banjo Discussion
List" (or whatever the keyword is). It also inserts a line
at the beginning of the email that says
"Sender-name <sender address> writes:"
It also allows the commands "who" (to see whose on the list)
and "unsubscribe" which look like this:
Subject: banjo::who
Subject: banjo::unsubscribe
both use the same perl script as before which check that the
sender is really on the list. "who" sends a copy of the
subscriber file and unsubscribe uses fgrep -v to take the
sender out of the file.
Subscribes I do myself because I want to know who is who.
It's simple and it works.
Kevin Kelleher <kevink(_at_)mit(_dot_)edu>
_________________________________________________________________________
Kevin Kelleher <kevink(_at_)mit(_dot_)edu>
http://world.std.com/~fury/
"The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him."
- Robert Benchley